Question Time 30th October 2025
The Panel:
Lisa Nandy (Labour)
Harriet Cross (Conservative)
Matthew Goodwin (Author and Academic)
Faiza Shaheen (Economist and Activist)
Venue: Bradford
Lisa Nandy is on QT too often, even to the point of being a guest this time last month. As such, we have run out of things to say about her and instead plough through her relatives. We have previously found out sister Francesca is the brainy and pretty one, father Dipak was an Indian public school race relations wallah, and her mother and stepfather were leftie TV producers in Granadaland. That leaves her husband.
Not her real name, Lisa Eve Collis, her spouse is Andy Collis, a graduate of the University of London with a master’s in International Development Studies. Andy has over 20 years of experience in journalism and public relations. Speaking of relations, in 2020, he donated £20,000 to his wife’s campaign when she ran for the leadership of the Labour Party.
His company, Andrew Collis Communications, specialises in traditional and digital public relations. In other words, he is a lobbyist married to a cabinet minister. According to himself, the Labour MP for Wigan’s husband advises:
‘Global brands, businesses and specialist operations on delivering integrated communications services across a broad range of sectors. My client relationships are rooted in openness, honesty and trust. Strategic insight, creativity and service excellence ensure a tailored communications strategy that generates awareness, builds brand equity and drives change.’
Listen to her!
Clients include the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Awards Foundation and Proskauer Rose, an international law firm who ‘advise cutting-edge clients at the intersection of private capital and the sectors in which they invest.’
Comrade Andy’s other business comrades include the proletarians at Allianz Global Risks, BT Global, BNY Mellon (a global financial services company overseeing more than $53 trillion of assets) and DAC Beachcroft (more international lawyers).
Burnham-ite Lisa, rather than being on the telly all the time because she’s nice to look at, is being thrown a series of hospital passes by struggling fly-half Keir Starmer. Last time she appeared, digital ID was the unpopular broken Britain Blairite breaking news, this time around it’s an expected 2p in the pound increase in income tax at next month’s budget.
While we’re on the topic, am I the only Puffin who thinks a direct link between public spending and take-home pay might be a good thing? Borrowed up to the max and unable to print money or quantitatively ease due to inflationary pressures (think: the end of the pandemic), might it be sobering for the do-gooders in the carefully selected QT audience to enjoy a take-home pay cut every time the millionaire doctors get yet another pay increase?
Harriet Cross is a refreshing new face on the QT panel. The 35-year-old was only elected to Parliament in the 2024 general election and is currently an opposition Conservative Party assistant whip and the MP for Gordon and Buchan.
A graduate of Imperial College London with a degree in Zoology and a master’s in Rural Land and Business Management, Harriet had a career in chartered rural surveying before entering Parliament. Daughter of a pharmacist, her peripatetic childhood included stints in Harrogate and the Republic of Ireland. Boyfriend is geologist Tom, a son of dairy farmers. Is she as refreshingly grounded as her QT Review bio suggests? We shall see.
A political scientist known for his research into the extreme, far, ultra-hard right, Matthew Goodwin is a graduate of Politics and Contemporary History from the University of Salford. Alongside an MA in Political Science from the University of Western Ontario, he also holds a PhD from the University of Bath.
Since completing his education, the 43-year-old has continued in education, having held positions at the University of Nottingham and the University of Kent. He is the author of National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy and Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics, and a senior visiting fellow at the ‘independent’ policy institute Chatham House.
Speaking of revolting, Mr Goodwin’s mighty work sits a wholesome 81,077 places ahead of the Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom in the Amazon best sellers list.
Matthew claims to advise governments and organisations globally. However, a closer look suggests only if they read his Matt Goodwin Substack, where his current job title is, cringingly, Writer-in-Chief of his own weblog. Merssers Puton, Xi, Trump et al may also follow the advice he tenders if they happen to watch his slot on GB News.
One of the East End Woodford Green Shaheens, Faiza Shaheen’s husband is actor Akin Gazi, oft pictured on Instagram as a true Eastender in his Man United top. Ms Shaheen, not her real name, Dr Faiza Gazi, has never had a job, rather a parade of research, academia and charity non-occupations.
Yet another QT PPE graduate, St John’s, Oxford, the 43-year-old continued her studies at the University of Manchester where she completed an MA in Statistics. At the London School of Economics, she earned a PhD, her doctoral thesis being entitled Identifying “at-risk” neighbourhoods: Exploring the scope for an Index of Area Vulnerability. Her area of vulnerability being her nutty and prejudiced politics aided and abetted by itchy fingers and a mobile phone.
In the 2024 general election she was expecting to stand against dim but dimmer Iain Duncan Smith in Chingford. However, an unfortunate series of tweets, retweets and likes kiboshed the good doctor’s political career in much the same way she would like to kibosh the state of Israel.
Ms Shaheen had compared Israel to apartheid South Africa and urged a boycott of Jewish (oops, Israeli) businesses. She also supported Jeremy Corbyn’s lack of support for the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s critical report on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, which resulted in the former party leader having the whip removed, being suspended, being expelled and founding his own party.
Furthermore, she agreed ‘hysterical people’ ‘mobilised by professional organisations’ are part of an ‘Israeli lobby’ who assail those even mildly critical of Israel. Labour’s National Executive Committee took fright and replaced her with a Starmer loyalist, Shama Tatler. Dr Faiza stood as an independent, splitting the leftie vote and thus returning dimmer but even dimmer Mr Duncan Smith to Parliament.
Not to worry. Shaheen returned to the London School of Economics, where she has what it takes to be both a visiting professor in practice and a distinguished policy fellow. Hmmm.
***
The first question, from a strangely untinged audience for Bradford, was, ‘Where should we house asylum seekers?’ Lisa said she came from one of the first towns (Wigan) to get them, and it had been a disaster. She referred to the illegal immigrants as being very vulnerable people and those protesting against them as far-right racists.
Remember, Puffins, Lisa is saying this after this week’s three stabbings – one of them fatal – in Uxbridge and the early release of the Epping sex offender who, having been captured, was then released again and given £500 and a free trip home to Ethiopia.
Why will it be any different, if, as is the present intention, they’re put in army barracks, wondered La Bruce? For instance in Inverness, that would be in the middle of the city. It’s because of the last government, muttered an embarrassed-looking Nandy, to some applause from the carefully selected BBC audience.
Matt Goodwin thought the present chaos at the borders is the opposite of common sense. £15 billion is being spent to accommodate people who are breaking our laws. He claimed we invented fair play and yet are incentivising people to come here and put our women and children at risk.
He mentioned Uxbridge, Bournemouth, and the case of Rhiannon Whyte, stabbed 20 times in the head by an illegal immigrant in Walsall. He outlined his solution, which included leaving the ECHR and repealing Tony Blair’s Human Rights Act. Some applause for that as well.
The camera swept the audience. I counted about 95 present, with only about nine of them being tinged. This being Bradford, and obviously not an advert, the non-whites were massively underrepresented. What a strange game the BBC plays.
Faiza thought the asylum system to be in chaos, both in terms of the time taken to process and regarding the places they are sent to stay. She pulled Matt up for highlighting immigrant crime. She’d judged a competition for illegal immigrants’ children who arrived here via ‘irregular’ routes.
‘They’re coming from places like Iraq and Afghanistan, which most of us here have memories long enough to understand that we have a role about why those countries are in a bad way,’ she said to thunderous applause from two coachloads of bussed-in BBC types who presumably think the good people of those places are or were so much better off under the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.
And the Sudan, she continued, where atrocious things are happening on the ground. Her coreligionists slaughtering Christians, she forgot to add. The stabbers and rapists are normal people. More applause. I’ve changed my mind about the tax thing. These people have a death wish; they’ll bankrupt themselves and the rest of us with their bien-pensant nonsense.
Harriet thought these things are toxic because people don’t realise this is a vital area that the government has to solve. Wonder what that means? She muddled us further by talking about present and future solutions. It’s much harder than scoring points. People have to feel they are being listened to. Note, not actually listened to, just feel as though they are.
A loon in the audience blamed white British people for immigrant violence and referenced an assault upon a Sikh woman in the Midlands. In connection with which a man has been charged, but the case is yet to reach trial. Were the races reversed, La Bruce would have closed the audience member down on grounds of the investigation being live.
At which point, I’d had enough and ventured on (at my age) a hazardous migration up the stairs in the dark. Maybe I should apply for asylum somewhere? Preferably somewhere energy-rich where prices allow for the turning on of lights or even the running of a chair lift. Iraq?
© Always Worth Saying 2025
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
