Question Time 26th March 2026
The Panel:
Jacob Richards (Labour)
Tom Tugenhat (Conservative)
Layla Moran (LibDem)
Tom Skinner (Businessman)
Venue: Clacton
Tonight’s may be a briefer QT Review — not necessarily a bad thing; one always runs the risk of boring you. The issue is that we’re so busy at my other employ (with its attendant 5:30 am starts) that they’ve stopped our holidays. However — mutiny. We refuse to do overtime unless we get our holidays, so we work our holidays as overtime, as well as doing more overtime… more overtime which entitles us to more holidays. Is this a doom loop, or a virtuous circle? We shall see. Happy days, while it lasts!
Despite being famous as Nigel Farage’s seat, no Reform UK MP has been invited onto tonight’s Clacton-on-Sea panel. Instead, we have a supporter: Tom Skinner, a businessman, television personality, and influencer known for appearing on The Apprentice and Strictly Come Dancing. Thirty-five-year-old Tom was educated privately at £56,000-per-annum Brentwood School. By age 19, he was a director of Essex Furniture Ltd. From there, he became a director of the Fluffy Pillow Company, later rising to managing director of Bosh Beds Ltd.
They say a good definition of stupidity is doing the same thing twice while expecting a different outcome. Is Tom wise to appear on QT? His appearance on the BBC’s Strictly became controversial after his somewhat early elimination from the show, accompanied by a hint of vote-rigging. Will the carefully selected BBC QT audience be kinder to Tom than Shirley Ballas and Anton du Beke? We shall see.
Puffin’s favourite, Layla Moran, is the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon. The half-Palestinian, pansexual 43-year-old is the present chair of the Health and Social Care Committee. Her partner is Rosy Cobb, the sacked former Lib Dem head of media. Her father was an English diplomat; her grandfather (on the other side of the family) was a writer and one of the Jerusalem Jawhariyyahs. Ms Moran was educated at £61,000-per-annum Roedean and Imperial College and, prior to politics, taught maths and physics in the private sector at an international school in Brussels.
A fuller QT Review biography of Tom Tugendhat is available here. Suffice it to say, Tom is mega-posh and one of the Nantes Espivent de La Villesboisnet de La Prévalayes on his mother’s side and a Menche de Loisne on his father’s.
Tom attended St Paul’s School (£61,000 per annum). He then attended the University of Bristol, where he studied theology. Later, he earned a master’s degree in Islamic Studies from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
Not his real name: Lieutenant Commander the Right Honourable Thomas Georg (without an “e”) John Tugendhat MBE VR joined the Territorial Army — on the education side — and served as an Arabic-speaking intelligence officer in Iraq. His naval rank is presumably due to being seconded to the Royal Marines as a translator during Gulf War II.
Elected to Parliament in 2015, the 52-year-old is currently the Conservative MP for Tonbridge but isn’t in the Shadow Cabinet.
Jacob Ben Richards is the Labour MP for Rother Valley and a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice. The London-born 36-year-old was educated privately at £31,000-a-year Highgate School and at Somerville College, Oxford (history), before completing the Bar Professional Training Course at City, University of London. Called to the Bar in 2017, he was called from it at the July 2024 general election.
Keeping it in the media–political bubble: his father is grammar school boy and North London resident Steve Richards, a TV presenter, columnist, and parliamentary lobbyist. Hmm. His wife is Liz, a former Sky News correspondent, and Greg Poynton, another Labour MP, is his brother-in-law.
A friend of Israel, Mr Richards has received a £2,200 freebie to visit the country. Other payments include continuing remuneration from his chambers. These include (via our friends at TheyWorkForYou) £13,668 on 8 August 2024 for “hours, details: none since my election” [4 July 2024]. Beats doing overtime and working your holidays!
Other donors include disgraced Morgan McSweeney’s Labour Together (£10,000), and Danny Luhde-Thompson and Cressida Pollock (£5,000). Who are they? Daniel is a strategic adviser at the investment firm Quadrature Capital. The firm has more than $200m (£158.7m) in shareholdings in private healthcare firms. Hmm.
Barrister’s daughter Cressida (St Paul’s for Girls, £39,000) is a management consultancy and capital management wallah, and a one-time adviser to the upright citizens at the Zambian Ministry of Health. Hmmm.
Despite my introduction, I’m not so sure this week’s review is brief. They’re such a load of self-important, entitled sharks, one feels obliged to elucidate.
***
Question One, was about disillusionment. Tom Tugenhat thought things were going to get better, as previously we’d invented accountancy and penicillin. We have to trust people with their money and families. This is an extraordinary country with our best days ahead of us – to silence from the audience.
Jake could hear. The government understands, and the cost of living is the top priority. Energy is going down, the minimum wage is going up, as is the old age pension. In saying energy was going down, one assumes he means in price. Although supply may well be on the slide as well, given the difficult times in the Gulf.
A local businessman complained about being endlessly taken by the taxman. Likewise, energy companies and landlords. ‘Now look,’ Jacob kept on saying. The cost of living is a joke, began Tom Skinner, in his best I-didn’t-go-to-public-school pretend accent. ‘Left, right and cent-ah.’ ‘Pee-pill’. ’Yous lot’. Going too far, even for an Old Brentwoods (school motto ‘virtue, learning and manners make a good start’), he called La Bruce, ‘mate’.
Moron moved the topic towards the Health Service and her speciality on the Social Care committee, especially spending on mental health. A lady complained that VAT and National Insurance had been put on her Motorbility. A student moaned about a tight employment market alongside the expense of servicing student debt. A gentleman in the audience pointed out that energy costs have gone up since Labour was elected.
Jacob thought a good way to improve mental health might be to have more people, especially young people, in work. Nobody suggested cutting taxes and deregulating.
Question Two was about Meta (and Google’s YouTube) being successfully sued in the USA regarding childhood addiction to social media. Oh, I forgot to mention, Jake has also taken a donation of £2,908.02 from Google. Tom Skinner makes his money out of social media, but still doom scrools. ‘We’ff awl dun it,’ he noted.
We should change what’s put on it, not all this hate. Maybe phones should be banned in schools? Banning it for under-16s is a thought too. ‘You know what I mean?’ To more applause. Tom Tugenhat wanted it banned for children too, as many other things are banned on the basis of age.
Jacob forgot to mention the donation from Google and wanted to get a balance right. We need to consult. Despite claiming Farage is close to the big tech companies, his memory was still not jogged towards the £2,908.02 tucked inside the back of his mobile phone case.
Moron complained about fake news, oft propagated by politicians like herself, she forgot to add. TomTug asked how many people use TikTok. Nobody, according to a show of hands. Just as well as TikTok, according to TomTug, is edited by the Chinese Communist Party.
No matter how brief a QT Review, there must be a Girl War. I have trouble with colours. According to Grok via screen captures, Moron wore a deep charcoal jacket accessorised with a gold chain upon a plunging neck line. La Bruce, was in a similarly coloured jacket covering a neck-high bright, vibrant pink top.
And the winner is… Tom Skinner, whose linkedin profile shows an AI of his open-necked self in a tartan suit while striking a Masters of the Universe pose on a London roof top. In the background, the Shard looks on in admiration. Diamond geeza!
© Always Worth Saying 2026
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