Fiona Bruce: 'Let's hear from a(nother) Tory voter'
The antique fancier and Question Time presenter is at it again.
BBC Question Time is political pornography in which mostly party operators spin HQ-supplied lines, and coordinated audience members, many of whom are party foot soldiers on a three-line whip, vomit opinions into the public domain with self-congratulatory smirks.
Question Time is bad for one’s mental health, so I tend not to watch it.
Many do watch Question Time, however, and some foolishly take it as an accurate barometer of public opinion. More cynical souls see Question Time as a means of engineering opinion around topical issues, and keeping a lid on the more controversial issues. This is one of the rolls of a state broadcaster.
Last night’s edition of Question Time is a case in point. Presenter Fiona Bruce’s political bias is no secret, or at least her expressed bias, dictated by the voice in her earpiece. Note that Bruce is married to Nigel Sharrocks, an ad-man who does political messaging for the Tory party, which may or may not tell us something.
Bruce on Question Time is endlessly excoriated on social media for an apparent bias toward conservative opinion, but one should always remember that panelists are selected according to strict criteria, even if some of these are driven by populist concerns. Contributing audience members - aka the Wall of Gammon - are said to be selected according to party vote share in the last general election.
This week’s Question Time featured Mick Lynch, leader of the railworkers’ union. Lynch has a reputation for handling client journalists with the contempt they deserve, and over the past few weeks has amassed a collection of high-profile scalps. The problem for Lynch is that getting the better of Piers Moron in a one-to-one scrap is very different from a micromanaged panel discussion set in front of a baying mob.
Bruce is a master at controlling such situations, and yesterday she carried it off with aplomb. Lynch was repeatedly attacked by Bruce, and cut off from speaking when rhetorically assaulted by others. Social media today is awash with comments about Bruce’s behaviour, but short of massed complaints to Ofcom I’m not sure if anything will come of it. Bruce is a goddess among BBC ‘talent’, and she knows it. Nothing can touch Bruce, and she acts with impunity.