Question Time 8th October 2026
The Panel:
Jake Richards (Labour)
Harriet Cross (Conservative)
Max Wilkinson (LibDem)
Annabel Denham (Daily Telegraph)
Kevin Maguire (Daily Mirror)
Venue: Peterlee
‘Jake’ Richards is the Labour MP for Rother Valley (since July 2024) and is Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice, Minister for Sentencing, Human Rights and Technology. Is this for real, or, in the strange times in which we live, has he just self-identified a grand, if rather ludicrous, title?
His northern credentials for tonight’s Peterlee, County Durham, edition of Question Time include being born in London and being privately educated at £31,000-a-year Highgate School, before graduating in History from Somerville College, Oxford.
The thirty-six-year-old appeared on this programme in March this year, but as Jacob, not Jake. Might Mr Richards have to self-define something out of existence in the tolerant, inclusive, multicultural London media-political bubble?
According to the MP War Crimes website — yes, there is such a thing — Jacob did not sign a letter calling for sanctions on Israel, did vote to declare Palestine Action a terrorist organisation, and has been on a Labour Friends of Israel jolly. In the way in which all things are categorised by colour under the hypersensitive London Race Laws, MP War Crimes allocates Jacob an orange sticker proclaiming ‘clearly anti-Palestinian’.
Elsewhere in the bubble, his father is grammar-school boy and North London resident Steve Richards, a TV presenter, columnist and parliamentary lobbyist. His wife is Liz, a former Sky News correspondent. Greg Poynton, another Labour MP, is a brother-in-law.
As anybody with a flat cap and whippet might, Jacob completed the Bar Professional Training Course at City, University of London, and was called to the Bar in 2017.
When Mrs Badenoch spun the empty Hero lager bottle, the thin end pointed a bit too far north, with this week’s Tory being Harriet Cross, MP for Gordon and Buchan and Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland.
The daughter of a pharmacist, her peripatetic childhood included stints in Harrogate and the Republic of Ireland. 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.
There are two types of background on QT Review — biographic and photographic. The latter is what’s happening behind the subject in the photo provided by the BBC. If it’s not the Question Time set, then QT Review HQ can’t just copy, paste and paraphrase from a previous programme (boo), but has to do some research (double boo).
This brings us to Max Wilkinson, not his real name: Maximilian Peter McGregor Wilkinson. He attended school in Weston-super-Mare before studying Business Management and Administration at Cardiff University. A career in journalism and communications followed, including a spell acting for Cheltenham Ladies’ College (£66,000 per annum) and for lobbyist Camargue, an ‘award-winning communications agency’ with a ‘reputation for excellent strategic advice, value-adding creative campaigns and high-impact delivery’.
Camargue boasts that its clients include those in the ‘energy, resources and decarbonisation’ sectors. Hmm. Eagle-eyed Puffins may recall Max’s ‘Sunshire’ Private Members’ Bill, which forces solar-energy-generation technology upon all new-build homes. Hmmm.
Currently the Lib Dem spokesman on home affairs, Maximillian’s northern credentials extend as far as being MP for, erm, Cheltenham.
Annabel Denham is cagey about her personal details but, suffice it to say, she is in her 40s, has four children and is a graduate of Manchester University (History and French) and the School of Oriental and African Studies (International Studies and Diplomacy).
After that, she embarked on a predictable Metropolitan Cook’s Tour of London politics, advocacy and journalism, which included a spell as a researcher for high-church Tory Peter Lilley.
Currently in what sounds like the non-job of ‘deputy comment editor’ at the Telegraph, was it Annabel who banned me and my oh-so-hilarious contributions, days after trousering my annual (non-refundable) subscription?
Also with a dodgy background, Kevin Maguire has appeared on Question Time before, but several years BC (before your favourite unread Comments website). Alongside him at the Question Time desk in 2008 were Jacqui Smith (expenses fraudster), Chris Huhne (jailed perjurer), Louise Bagshawe (where to start? ‘Mentally vulnerable’?) and, the evening’s white sheep, Liam Fox.
Born in South Shields in 1960, and a grammar-school boy, Maguire studied Politics at the University of York before completing postgraduate journalism training at Cardiff University. Leaving the North for good 42 years ago, Kevin began his newspaper career at the Western Morning News in Plymouth.
Subsequently, he worked for the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mirror and The Guardian, where he became chief reporter. He returned to the Mirror in 2004 as associate editor, focusing heavily on politics.
A fake northern leftie with what students of such things pigeonhole as a false accent more cringy than Bridget Phillipson’s, Kevin writes a regular political column for the New Statesman and is a familiar face on British television, appearing regularly on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Sky News, BBC programmes and Channel 5. He is also a visiting professor of journalism at the University of Sunderland.
Keeping it in the London media bubble, his wife is novelist and Guardian writer Emma Burstall (St Paul’s School for Girls, £40,000 pa, and Christ’s College, Cambridge).
Guardian archaeology reveals an old Emma column in which she mentions her children but, and who can blame her, avoids naming her husband. Keeping it deeper into the London media bubble, daughter Georgia is an actress, one of whose roles, in the interests of equality of opportunity, is to be narrator of her mother’s audiobooks.
All of which begs the question: did the great northern proletarian working-class left-wing hero privately educate his children? No — but he did use a selective grammar school.
***
Regular readers might think the presence of La Bruce, La Denham, La Cross, and even the at-times over-excitable Kevina Maguire might make for a good girl war. Not so. Due to today’s by-election, QT won’t be broadcast until 10:40 pm. Too late for me! So I’m listening on BBC Sounds at a more reasonable hour and therefore unable to comment on tonight’s dressing-to-outshine bitch fest.
***
Notable by their absence from the Durham programme is Reform UK. Fifty-one out of ninety-eight councillors are from Nigel Farage’s party. Hold on, ninety-eight? How come a hundred congressmen run America, but it takes only two fewer elected representatives to run Durham? An opportunity for a saving there. What shall we spend it on?
Question one was about securing military bases against modern threats. La Bruce referenced Fairford, Iran, a suspected Latvian break-in at Molesworth, and the arrest of a navy chap suspected of spying for Russia.
Unstable, dangerous times began, Jake. War is creeping towards our border from Russia. At a snail’s pace, he forgot to add, as the Russians have managed about 200 miles in 12 years. Imagine it’s 1951 and Adolf hasn’t quite reached Warsaw.
Jake promised the biggest upgrade in defence spending since the Cold War, including a big commitment to ‘the battle of the future’, to intelligence and cyber. Prompted about the not-so-futuristic wire fence at Fairford, Jacob couldn’t talk about it as it’s an ongoing investigation.
Posh Harriet, as Scottish as Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke-Badenoch is English, chirped in her Home Counties accent that there are endless delays to Labour’s Defence Investment Plan and that it remains unfunded. She promised a Britannia Shield, an integrated missile defence system.
How will it work? wondered La Bruce. It is and isn’t like an Israeli Iron Dome, she replied. Ours will be a long-range one. Eh? It will identify where threats come from. At 3,800 mph, she forgot to mention.
Excitable Maguire thought a missile defence system was the right thing to do, but in cooperation between all 32 NATO countries and concentrated around the NATO border.
As for Fairford, he was allowed to monologue despite it being a live investigation. No explosives had been found. The suspects had been released on bail. This is a kickback from involvement in war against Iran. Maguire was pleased the American bombers are no longer here. He blamed Trump – to applause.
An audience member was allowed to ask if the government are hiding what happened at Fairford? No explosives, plus bail? Is this not a scam? Silence from the panel who, to be blunt, looked as though they were hiding something.
If I may interrupt. Keeping the lid on domestic Muslim terror is the top priority here. A Nice / Barcelona / Stockholm vehicle attack on the base seems a likely explanation. Talk of an associated drone swarm from Terhan is a sad attempt to shift attention. Think rent boys, El Money and Mr Starmer’s long-suffering front door.
Annabel saw defence as the widest chasm between what politicians promise and what they do. The welfare state and servicing our borrowing is costing a fortune – £400 billion. We are already under attack but just below the intensity of conventional war. Politicians aren’t committing to spend 3% of GDP on defence. We’re not a serious country if we can’t ensure the safety of an airfield.
A Barrovain spoke. Hang on a minute. Daily Telegraph-style, I was banned from QT in Hartlepool for living too far away, but not as far away as Barrow is from Peterlee. Is the lady a plant? Perhaps from Submarine Solutions?
We don’t understand the nature of modern warfare, she began. Submarines are the thing. Another was launched last week from Barrow. No, it wasn’t. HMS Agamemnon left Barrow for Faslane. Commissioned while still being built (to up the apparent numbers), it will be years before it’s fully operational.
The traditional ship is a thing of the past, she continued, before striking a bottle of champagne against the quote of the week, if not of the decade: ‘Have ships gone down the river?’ *guffaw*
The first duty is defence of the people, began Maximillian. He blamed all previous governments for the present pickle. He invented ‘defence bonds’ which will raise £20 billion out of thin air.
We already spend enough, interupted Maguire. We need a better bang for our bucks, he rightly concluded.
Nobody suggested disengaging from other countries’ wars…
© Always Worth Saying 2026
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