Question Time 5th March 2026
The Panel:
Stephen Doughty (Labour)
James Cleverly (Conservative)
Shashank Joshi (Journalist)
George Monbiot (Journalist)
Annabel Denham (Journalist)
Venue: Kettering
Having given up on the politicians, the media political bubble in London has packed the panel with journalists, all of whom – and make of this what you may – have 14 letters in their names. Razor sharpe Puffins with more than mild OCD, and a special place north even of this humble reviewer on the spectrum, will already have notieed if we spell Stephen with a ‘V’ then not only the journalists but all of the panel have the same number of letters in their names. And you thought the Rule of Fourteen was something to do with Bridge!
In these troubled times, it’s reassuring to hear that we have a former Minister of State for the Middle East and North Africa in the room. Step forward and take a bow, Lieutenant Colonel The Right Honourable Sir James Spencer Cleverly MP, Conservative member for Braintree and present Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.
The 56-year-old’s great strategic thinking extends as far as advising his followers, during the fourth ballot of the 2024 Tory leadership election, to vote tactically for his rival, Mrs Badenoch. As if a drone stalling upon leaving the lorry and dropping on a trigger-happy Mullah’s head, so many of his adherents followed his advice that Clevely finished below both Ms Badenoch and arch rival Robert Jenrick – thereby using his own supporters to knock himself out of the contest. Der.
Privately educated at Riverston School and Colfe’s School in London, James studied at Thames Valley University and cheekily refers to his qualification in Hospitality Management as a ‘business degree’. After graduating, James worked in publishing while simultaneously rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Territorial Army.
His mother is Ghanaian, a nurse, his father, a chartered surveyor.
Update: Thirteen, I was including the space between the Christian name and surname. Makes sense now.
Annabel Denham is a Columnist and Senior Political Commentator at The Telegraph who previously edited the newspaper’s Comment and Opinion pages. Suspiciously cagey with her personal details, in case you must know, the Temp puts Ms Denham’s age at between 33 and 43, Grok (via her pen picture) at 42 and QT Review HQ, via her education, at 41.
That education took place at the University of Manchester, where she graduated in History and French, followed by a Master’s in International Studies and Diplomacy from the School of African and Oriental Studies at the University of London.
Meanwhile, she was a researcher for Tory grandee Peter Lilly and a press office intern at Conservative Party HQ. From there, she embarked on a career in ‘refugees welcome’-style globalist non-jobs, some funded by the likes of USAID and the Gates Foundation.
A fuller QT Review biography of Annabel can be found here.
George Monbiot (not his full name, George Joshua Richard Monbiot) is a Guardian columnist and Green fanatic. While you were doing without because of the madness of the likes of Net Zero, George was being educated at £47,000-a-year Stowe, and Brasenose College, Oxford. The childhood home being a £3.5 million 1836 Georgian Berkshire mansion set in 1.7 acres, complete with orchard, paddock, small field and shelter for a pony.
A full QT Review biography of George, including the full estate agent’s spiel, details of his remarkably well-connected parents, and the adverts for his nanny (from a yellowing copy of the Reading Evening Post), can be found in this QT Review.
As a relief to the felled tree community, George’s great work This Can’t Be Happening (Green Ideas) sits on a barren forest floor 86,015 places behind the Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom on the Amazon best sellers’ chart.
By the way, owing to the present busyness of the global stage, QT Review HQ hasn’t mentioned the 120 Days of Sodom since January 23rd. During that time, the Marquis’s great work has fallen over 100,000 places on the best-sellers chart. Perhaps, as if a Schrodinger’s cat with a sore bottom, the book may as well not exist when unmentioned on G-P? Should we be getting a commission?
Stephen Doughty is the Labour Party MP for Cardiff South and Penarth and has been since 2012. The 46-year-old was educated at the University of Oxford and various elsewheres until a spell as a perpetual student gave way to roles in charidee, ‘international development’ and policy. In other words, he’s never had a job.
A Cub and Scout leader, Stephen was co-chair of the LGBT+ Parliamentary Labour Party between 2017 and 2024 and is currently the rather grand-sounding Minister of State for Europe, North America and UK Overseas Territories in the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.
Shashank Joshi is a journalist and defence analyst specialising in security and international affairs. He serves as Defence Editor at the nutty globalist Economist, where he writes on military strategy, geopolitics and global conflicts. Educated at the University of Cambridge and Harvard, he previously contributed at the Royal United Services Institute, focusing on defence policy and nuclear strategy.
He has also been a Research Associate at the Changing Character of War (CCW) Programme at Oxford University and graduated from the Columbia-Cornell Summer Workshop on the Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy (SWAMOS). Oh.
In a further plug (extra commission?) Joshi’s The Permanent Crisis: Iran’s Nuclear Trajectory sits a bullet-dropping parabola 247,676 places beneath De Sade’s observer effect afflicted prose.
***
No sign of it at 9 pm on the iPlayer or the News Channel, where it’s usually live-streamed. I have an early start tomorrow, i.e., 5 am-ish (incoming from Japan, taps nose), so I don’t feel like watching the 10:40 pm edition.
Shall we make something up? No. We shall do what the tabloids do and pad out what’s being posted on social media.
On Twitter, obsessives are complaining that this happened last week as well. But it didn’t, I managed to find it. You sometimes have to zigzag through the iPlayer, or even strike out for BBC Sounds – which makes the outfit girl-war a casualty of the fog of war.
Twitter contributor Outspoken complains of the irony of pro-Hamas BBCQT being hit by an Iranian drone, while JenniferJuniper agrees with me that she can’t sit up until 10.40. Rick O’Shea blames Jeremy Corbyn. The cusp of WWWIII and the BBC decides not to air Question Time on iPlayer, bemoans Ste Arnold. Presumably, he/she means WWIII, not that we’re on the cusp of some kind of 3.0 upgrade to the World Wide Web.
Over on Facebook, Barry Norman no less, points out ‘not on news or iplayer’. Tina Potter has been on iPlayer and Question Time isn’t on. ‘It’s not on the news channel either.’ Gil Williams hints at a solution rather than the problem: ‘Who on earth would watch this rubbish?’
I’ll tell you what I’ll do. To save time later, I’ll make my supper and record the above for the podcast now. If I’m still awake at quarter to elevenish and speed type through the first ten minutes of the programme. Deal?
Now I’m having technical trouble and the software is latching onto somebody’s earphones rather than the microphone. Grrrrr. Try again. (Still having a better night than Tottenham!).
***
Question One: Why are we being dragged into a war with no understanding of the long-term outcome? Spehen highlighted the need to get people out, protect our assets and find some kind of negotiated solution.
James highlighted Iran’s creeping nuclear programme. The prime minister had blocked the US from using its equipment out of bases here. Starmer is doing the right thing now , but doing it late. He is on the back foot. We have lost our seat at the top table of global influence.
La Bruce wondered of the delay in getting HMS Dragon to Cyprus.
An audience member referenced Trump’s previous headline-grabbing successful attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Shashank said that it was wrong to say that Iran was close to building nuclear weapons. The war is unnecessary and unwise. His biggest concern was the loss of opportunity in spending $1 billion a day on Iran that could be spent defending Kiev or Taiwan.
The government has been inconsistant, began Annabel. We look unreliable – a bad-faith actor. She moved on to reputation. For the last two decades, defence spending has been a scandal, and that’s why we’re not at the top table. The money has been spent on welfare, not defence.
George couldn’t see any clear anything. The real reason is spectacle – according to George. Making headlines is Trump’s happy place. The war is illegal and foolish. James Cleverly has learned nothing from Iraq et al. The further we stand away from that, to thunderous applause, the better off we will be.
Nobody mentioned Israel. Strange times indeed.
© Always Worth Saying 2026
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