Question Time 17th September 2026
The Panel:
Heidi Alexander (Labour)
Joy Morrissey (Conservative)
Danny Kruger (Reform UK)
Caroline Lucas (Green Party)
Venue: Salisbury
For once the interesting member of the family, rather than the dullard, appears on Question Time. Joyce Rebekah Inboden was born in Indiana in 1981. The daughter of a church leader, she was educated at the $25,000-a-year Worthington Christian School near Columbus, Ohio.
Besides being cheap by UK standards, the Ohio EdChoice Scholarship scheme provides some state funding for private education. Likewise, ISA-style plans allow investments to grow tax-free, with funds then able to be withdrawn to pay for education. At the other end of the taxation telescope, fees are not taxed. Perhaps that’s why America is so far ahead of us?
On the other hand, the Rev. Inboden might have preferred to pay the tax and send Joy to the roughest local comprehensive. As, upon completing her education, and under the name Joy Boden, for some bizarre reason she fled Middle American suburbia and headed for Hollywood.
Specialising in what, perhaps, a broad-minded connoisseur might call the ‘low-budget’ or ‘limited production values’ end of show business, Joyce’s credits include the female lead in Geek Mythology. Not quite The Odyssey, from what one can make out of the supposed plot, a mysterious classical artefact renders a nerdy young man irresistible to women. Puffins of a sensitive nature may be startled, however, upon learning that what passes for dialogue includes lines such as: ‘Ride me like a donkey.’
Ms Boden can be viewed here in somewhat less-than-conservative attire.
After receiving mixed reviews, Joyce married film producer William Morrissey, gave birth to a daughter and moved to London to take a PhD in international development at the London School of Economics.
Stripped of Hollywood’s higher moral influence, Mrs Morrissey sank to becoming a Conservative councillor for the London Borough of Ealing, representing Hanger Hill ward. A further decline saw her entering the House of Commons as MP for Beaconsfield — the former seat of peak Remainer Dominic Grieve (who lived in France).
Mrs Morrissey is Mrs Badenoch’s Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities.
Her donors include the secretive United and Cecil Club: an unincorporated dining club associated with the Conservative Party whose members disguise their identity to funnel campaign funds to target seats.
Heidi Alexander (not her real name, Heidi Ballentyne) is the Labour MP for Swindon South and is Andy Burnham’s Secretary of State for Transport.
Wiltshire-born Heidi is a London political bubble lifer. Having graduated from Durham University with a Bachelor’s in Geography and a Master’s in European Urban and Regional Change, she joined the office of Cherie Blair at 10 Downing Street and later worked as a parliamentary researcher. Positions on Lewisham Borough Council and representing Lewisham as a Member of Parliament were to follow.
Daniel Rayne Kruger was born in Westminster and educated at Eton College, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Oxford. At the dullard, or even dead wood, side of the family tree, this 51-year-old is the son of author and property developer Rayne Kruger and his wife, Dame Prudence.
Saffers from the Cape, the Kruger’s English home was Chastleton Glebe — a rambling stone house set within a 30-acre Gloucestershire garden. Dame Prudence is the famous restaurateur and cookery broadcaster, Prue Leith.
Remaining within the London media bubble, Danny’s cousin Sam Leith is literary editor of The Spectator. Penny Junor, daughter of Daily Express heavyweight Sir John Junor, is an in-law.
Following his graduation, Danny drifted through a series of political non-jobs before becoming the Conservative MP for Devizes. A one-time Shadow Minister for Defence, Kruger defected to Reform UK in September of last year, is MP for East Wiltshire, and the head of Nigel Farage’s ‘Preparing For Government’ department. His donors include the arms industry’s QinetiQ Group plc.
As atmospheric hypocrisy reaches a dangerous tipping point, we turn to Caroline Lucas (not her real name). Dr Caroline Savage — the former Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion — was educated, in the interest of equality, at the private Malvern Girls’ College, before attending Exeter University and the University of Kansas.
Naturally, during her transatlantic commutes, only fresh air came out of the plane engines — unlike when the oiks fly off for a well-earned holiday. Upon returning to Exeter, she completed a PhD.
Harking back to better times when maids and shepherds found each other irresistible without any interference from Hollywood – and when donkeys were passive beasts of burden – Ms Lucas’s thesis was entitled, Writing for Women, a study of woman as reader in Elizabethan romance.
As if a character from an Elizabethan romance, husband is Richard Le Quesne Savage, an Oxford graduate and former Warwickshire county cricketer. In the interests of equality, Richard was privately educated at the exclusive Marlborough College and teaches English at the £37,000 a year Ardingly College.
Parents to two sons; one is an academic at the University of California, Santa Barbara. At family get-togethers, the fresh air out of the engines rule applies. Since leaving Parliament, Caroline has become Professor of Practice in Environmental Sustainability at the University of Sussex and has authored Another England: How to Reclaim our National Story.
Members of the trees about to be chopped down community will be concerned to read that this mighty work sits a respectable 43,451st on the Amazon bestseller chart, a planet warming 131,771 places above the Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom.
Question One: A beardy wondered which bot he should ask to find out whether AI is a threat to mankind?
We need more of it, suggested Danny, to stop us being reliant on China and America. We also need a moral framework to stop AI from going rogue. How, wondered La Bruce? By developing our own AI industry, he replied.
Caroline thought more AI is ‘deeply worrying’. Most worrying is the capitalist giants who own it. Erm, the Chinese Communist Party, Caroline? She wanted a pause. She had it in for data centres too. As with climate and nuclear, she wanted AI global treaties.
Scaremongering, said an audience member. The ozone layer? Climate change? We’re all still here; likewise AI. We’ll all be forced to buy something, then the threat will be forgotten.
Joy addressed the security angle. Excellent people are leaving when their brains could be used here. Taken out of their skulls and plugged into something, as if in a bad movie? She didn’t elucidate.
As we approach girl war, and with me not being good at colours, we must ask that which poses a 10% chance of destroying mankind: what colour is Joyce wearing?
We know La Bruce is in a pale blue jacket over a lighter blue hopped top, revealing the letters ‘M’ and ‘O’. Heidi is in a black jacket with a red top. As an aside, Danny Kruger is dressed for a funeral. Perhaps the human race’s?
No matter, the technological eminence grise informs me Joy’s dressed not in my original guess of ‘a kind of green’, but a muted, dusty blue (often referred to as slate blue, pastel blue, or steel blue). It has soft, cool undertones with a greyish tint. Her first good review!
As humans, we’ve messed up, began a leftie doom monger in the audience. Climate change will kill us all; it’s not just a 10% chance.
Heidi Alexander noted that the government had stopped Grok from undressing girls you half know on Facebook. AI technology will develop new drugs. Government can’t be a bystander to these big opportunities. And? Wondered Bruce. Regulators across the world, appropriate dialogue.
You don’t need AI to tell you that’s waffle. There is such a thing as an AI Safety Institute which the politicians present oft referred to, but as Caroline pointed out, it doesn’t have much in the way of powers.
Question Two: Are the £72 million in political donations made this week a threat to democracy? To nudge everyone in the right direction, La Bruce pointed out they were to Reform UK and possibly from abroad.
YES! Said Caroline. Hmm. The sight of Reform UK being bankrolled, she continued, is obscene. Hmmm. We need to clean this up. Hmmm. The hypocrisy-ometer passed the 72 million degree mark.
As for Caroline’s former parliamentary donors, these included a George Soros-funded lobby group, and Mark and Margaret Constantine of Lush cosmetics who made their money through retail outlets in those evil things called airports.
Contributors also included Sigrid and Lisbet Rausing, who, as Swedish billionaires, might be considered overseas donors.
Danny referenced the much bigger donations, over time, from businessmen and trade unionists to the Tory and Labour parties. Many of those donors are now in the House of Lords.
Heidi preferred Reform UK’s Nathan Gill, jailed for taking money from the Russians – according to Heidi. Not true. Gill was a (paid) advisor to Ukrainian opposition media before the battle for Kiev, and when Zelensky was threatening to close it down. A relationship that Gill declared to the EU at the time. Are you responsible for every criminal in the Labour Party? There are quite a few, responded Danny.
As for Heidi – The 51-year-old’s donors include disgraced Morgan McSweeney’s disgraced Labour Together, and OPD Group, a recruitment and business firm controlled by major political donor Peter Hearn.
Also, and usefully associated with a Swindon transport minister, Panattoni Developments Limited: A Californian logistics real estate developer. Major projects include a 7.2 million sq foot hub in a constituency neighbouring Heidi’s.
Why are we giving Reform a hard time? Wondered someone in the audience to surprising applause. Another chap mentioned these people are so rich their donations are uncorrupting small change to them.
Nobody mentioned the biggest British political recipient of foreign donations – many anonymous – the Tony Blair Institute.
© Always Worth Saying 2026
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