Question Time January 29th 2026
The Panel:
Douglas Alexander (Labour)
James Cartlidge (Conservative)
Jo Grady (University And College Union)
Konstantin Kisin (Commentator & podcaster)
Venue: King’s Lynn
Son of a doctor and a Church of Scotland minister, Douglas Garven Alexander is Labour MP for East Lothian and the current Secretary of State for Scotland. The 58-year-old graduated from the University of Edinburgh armed with an LLB and a First in Politics and Modern History.
Now enjoying a second stint in parliament, he was the member for Paisley South from 1997 to 2015 – when a post-independence referendum SNP landslide cost him his seat. During those 18 years, as well as appearing on Question Time over twenty times and being a Blair and Brown rising star, Mr Alexander also shone as an expenses cheat.
Over £30,000 of your money renovated his constituency home. Following a fire, he claimed both from the insurance company and the taxpayer. Campaign material was charged to expenses, despite it being a party matter.
Altogether, Alexander ‘quietly repaid’ £50,000 in over-claimed expenses. His sister Wendy is also a political animal and is also a cheat. She quit as Labour leader in the Scottish Parliament after failing to declare £8,000 of donations, some of which were illegal as they originated from a tax haven-based businessman.
A fuller QT Review biography, and the sorry tale of his stealing from the taxpayer, can be read here.
Baby-faced Jo Grady is a Senior Lecturer in Employment Relations at Sheffield University Management School and the General Secretary of the University and College Union.
QT Review oft sneers at panellists for never having had a job. The Wakefield lass goes one better and is yet to leave school. After graduating in Industrial Relations and completing her PhD at Lancaster, the 42-year-old took a position at the University of Leicester, lecturing in Trades Union Studies before moving on to Sheffield.
Like many a schoolgirl, Dr Jo spends too long on social media. Her cretinous contributions therein include urging comrades to resist the idea that men are men and women are women, and accusing Israel of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Gaza.
Furthermore, a Twitter spat with a Mr Paul Embury regarding the behaviour of girls on trains cost her £22,000 in damages. The sorry tale, the comparative standing of her great written work in the Amazon best sellers list, and a fuller QT Review biography of the not-so-good doctor can be found here.
Konstantin Kisin is a comedian, commentator and podcaster who, depending on the occasion, self-defines as British, Russian or Ukrainian.
The forty-three-year-old sprang to prominence after invited to sign a contract before performing comedy at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. Not heeding North Country raconteur and wit Bernard Manning’s advice to ‘never take a joke seriously’, the SAOC insisted upon ensuring ‘an environment where joy, love and acceptance is reciprocated by all.’
Having refused to put pen to paper and being non-personed, the resulting publicity launched his career as a stand-up comedian, panellist and pundit. Although we may be certain of the SOAS’s loony leftness, Mr Kisin’s biography is enigmatic.
Born on Christmas Day 1982, in interview with the Daily Mail, Konstantin said he was from Russia and came to the UK as a young boy to live with a grandfather who had fled from the Communist regime. The blurb promoting one of his books claims,
“Growing up in the Soviet Union, he experienced first-hand the horrors of a socialist paradise gone wrong, having lived in extreme poverty with little access to even the most basic of necessities.”
However, in his IMDb profile, the funnyman says he came to Britain with his grandfather aged 13. This will have been in 1995, five years after the end of the Cold War and four years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Of course, this could be his other grandfather. Or could it? Elsewhere, he says that his grandfather (the third?) died in the Holocaust, while also claiming (a fourth?) died fighting the Nazis.
A fuller QT Review biography (from 2002) examining his biography and that of his nutty wife is available here. Since then, new information has emerged. Yes, it would appear Kisin arrived in the mid 1990s, but not as a result of himself and a grandfather fleeing poverty and repression. Hmm.
According to the Temp, Konstantin’s father, Vadim Kisin, is an exiled former Russian businessman and government official. In the 1990s, Vadim was a successful businessman who later became a junior minister in the Russian government. In the mid-1990s, Vadim was accused of large-scale tax evasion and faced a choice between imprisonment and disappearing. Hmmm.
London-born James Cartlidge is the Tory MP for South Suffolk and Shadow Secretary of State for Defence. The 52-year-old is a graduate of the University of Manchester (Economics), a one-time leader writer at the Daily Telegraph, and a founder of the social housing shared-ownership portal Share to Buy.
As ever, the idler of the family is sent to Question Time. Wife Emily, the daughter of former Conservative MP Sir Gerald Howarth, is a mother of four who are only seven years apart and include a set of twins. Ouch!
In anticipation of the 2015 general election, James spoke to his local paper. According to the East Anglian Daily Times, previous Tory MP Tim Yeo had been de-selected because ‘members felt he did not have a high enough profile in the constituency’.
Mr Cartlidge was happy to reassure readers thus: “I’m lucky. My brother lives in London, and my in-laws live in London, so I could stay with them if needed – but this is my base, and it is not too far from London.” Which is interesting as, through our friends at the TheyWorkForYou website, we discover since being elected a decade ago, James has made the following annual parliamentary expenses claims for accommodation:
£12,568
£12,090
£32,392
£32,874
£31,346
£34,370
£31,418
£36,767
£36,598
Therefore, either James was lying through his teeth or has, in the past decade, spent £260,423 of your money to stay with his relatives.
In either case, are we surprised?
***
Question one: Who should Kier Starmer cosy up to, Trump or the Chinese?
Sinophobic James pointed out that the Chinese are supplying the Russians with an unpronounceable hypersonic missile that could strike King’s Lynn. Douglas said this was an insult to Scottish whiskey producers who sell £250,000,000 worth of the good stuff to China per year. Everybody else has been going to China, so that makes it all Ok. If we take seriously what Douglas described as cheap manufacturing there and ‘strong jobs here’, you have to deal with the Chinese.
James played the hypersonic missile card again and added, of course China can have an embassy in London, but the mega one with ‘dark rooms’ that Starmer is allowing? According to Douglas, MI5 and MI6 want all the Chinese in one mega building, rather than spread about the place.
Trump is whacky, said a whacky-looking leftie in the carefully selected BBC audience with big specs and too much makeup. She would rather be ‘in bed’ with the Chinese. James pointed out, to a bit of a howl from the assembled, that America is a democracy and China isn’t.
Konstanin noted a serious country should cosy up to everybody – with care. Everybody spies on everybody – it’s up to us to spy and counter-spy better than they do. There is a crisis of cultural existence in Western Europe as we withdraw from all sorts of economic competencies. We should become more self-sufficient, and then the superpowers would matter less.
The world order has shifted, squeaked Jo, because of Trump. Researchers at Sheffield University had found out all kinds of nasties about the People’s Republic, but because they are reliant on Chinese overseas students, their project had to be closed down. Starmer should cosy up to us, she continued, before referencing Norways soverign fund.
Instead of having such a fund, we had ‘privatised’ the North Sea to the detriment of the NHS and the education system. Oh. She’s obviously never been to Norway, as she omitted to mention that they have more oil than us but a population of less than one tenth of ours. Plus they are no post-industrial sanctuary city hell holes like Sheffield providing a bottomless pit for public spending. Also, nutty Net Zero Milliband isn’t closing their sector down.
A loon blamed Brexit. Douglas agreed. To repair the damage, we are going to have annual summits with the EU every year. Wont last. You know what Brussels is like. Before you know it, Douglas, there’ll be an annual summit every month. Konstanin interupted to say the EU is in decline as a market and the US is the most powerful country.
Question two. Is Reform a care home for old Tories? Konstantin told La Bruce off for introducing him as a Reform supporter. Which he isn’t. But. Reform is talking about Net Zero, immigration, etc. If Kier Starmer did the same, he would vote for Starmer. Some of Reform’s new defectors are impressive people and tried to do in the Tory Party what Reform voters want. Salvaging from the rotting remains of the Conservative Party corpse is necessary to win the next election.
Reform are pushing for more welfare spending, according to James. La Bruce contradicted him, saying that is not a Reform policy. James pointed to the lifting of the two-child cap which, he seems to have forgotten, has already happened under Labour. James is proud of the Tories’ record in government. Kemi Badenoch is growing into her role.
According to an audience member, the Tories need to wake up. You’ve got rid of the people I like, he continued, Ken Clark and Rory Stewart. Gawd. The Tories need to reclaim the centre ground. He’d voted Labour at the election as he thought he was going to get a re-run of the ‘fantastic’ Blair/Brown government. Dear me. Shall we invade Iraq and wreck the economy with a credit bubble and burst? As for the mass, uncontrolled, unlimited immigration… read on.
Douglas shouted ‘racist’ – yawn. And ‘racist’ again. Zzzzz. Then ‘racist’ a bit louder. For some reason, he referenced the Manchester bombings – when we were bombed by a Libyan. Then he mentioned Tommy Robinson. Odd. In the forthcoming Manchester by-election in Gorton and Denton, Reform must be stopped. A dark force. Not much of a pitch, noted La Bruce.
Jo thought Burnham would be the best candidate in the by-election, but he’s been banned by Starmer.
It got worse. The ones who’d left the Conservatives were racists who are disgusting, according to a hottie in the audience with a mega fringe. A Green voter, she wailed about, ‘The state of the world.’ The state of you, girl.
The Tories were in the centre ground at the general election, pointed out Konstantin, that’s why they got thrashed. He wanted to give advice to the Labour Party. As a Remain voter and immigrant, he hoped he would be allowed to. Shouting down your opponent as intolerant, racist and bigoted never works. He cited the Brexit vote and the presence in Reform of the likes of Zia Yusuf.
Division had been caused by Douglas Alexander, as part of a Blair government which allowed mass, uncontrolled, unlimited immigration. And the Tories did the same. 55,000 per year net legal immigration has become more than that in illegal immigration alone. ‘When you,’ pointing at Douglas Alexander, ‘talk about polarisation, you created it, and you’re going to reap the whirlwind at the next election.’
And here’s an important point: just because Konstantin is a bit of a chancer, doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Whereas the left discredit people with labels to marginalise what they say, ourselves on the common sense Right, listen carefully and make up our own minds.
© Always Worth Saying 2026
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
