By Mark Langabeer, Hastings and Rye Labour member
I’m not normally a fan of Question Time, the BBC political ‘debate’ programme. Its guests are usually drawn from the establishment and Labour’s right-wing. Last Thursday, however, the panel included Mark Serwotka, the left trade union leader and general secretary of PCS.
Three topics were discussed, the cost of living crisis, refugees and the P&O dismissals. While Mark was, in my view, head and shoulders above the other panellists, Dom Jolly (writer and comedian) and Lisa Nandy (Labour’s levelling-up spokesperson) also caught the mood of the audience.
Damien Hinds (Tory minister for Security) and Kate Andrews, economics editor of the right-wing Spectator magazine, were also on the panel. Hinds was given a regular roasting from the audience. A 70-year-old woman expressed her anger at Chancellor Sunak’s response to the cost of living crises…and she was a Tory voter. She pointed out that children attending school without food in their stomachs and that families will be in debt.
Mark said that Universal credit and workers’ pay should be increased in line with inflation. Hinds and Andrews attempted to defend Sunak’s mini- budget and accept the “pain” that this will cause but Jolly and Nandy got loud applause when they said that the Government were out of touch with the realities of life for most workers.
Tories’ “hostile environment” policy not popular
Hinds was also under fire from the audience on visas for Ukrainian refugees and the “hostile environment” policy towards refugees from Iraq, Syria and Yemen. The host, Fiona Bruce, suggested that the Government had misread the public mood on this issue and even Andrews was critical of the Tories on this. Hinds was criticised by the audience for failing to respond with sufficient urgency and at this point, Bruce told him that despite appearances, the largest group in the audience were Tory voters.
The final question was on the sacking of P&O staff and their replacement with cheap labour. The audience were just as critical of the Tories as they were on the previous issues. Mark Serwotka pointed out that the Tories had recently talked out a bill that would have banned the practice of ‘fire and rehire’.
He also called for the nationalisation of P&O to prevent the employment of cheaper labour and to reinstate the sacked staff. Lisa Nandy said that she agreed with Mark with regards to the cancellation of government contracts awarded to the company. One member of the audience said that the company had admitted that they broke the law and it’s time that law-breaking chief executives should face criminal charges and even imprisonment.
If this episode of Question Time is anything to go by, the Tories are likely to get a pasting in the local elections in May. Johnson and Co may have thought that the war in Ukraine would divert people’s attention from pressing issues at home, but last Thursday’s Question Time demonstrated otherwise.
The episode of Question Time is still available on BBC i-player, here.
