Question time

Last night’s episode of Question Time saw David Dimbleby joined in Stoke-on-Trent by Sajid Javid, Lucy Powell, Ukip’s Paul Nuttall, the Sun‘s managing editor Stig Abell and Paris Lees, the transgender rights activist. With Jeremy Corbyn the main topic on the agenda following the Sun‘s story this week claiming Corbyn failed to bow deeply enough at the Remembrance Sunday service at Whitehall, would Corbyn’s supporters prove to all the merits of a new ‘kinder’ politics? At first, it looked like Corbyn’s call to ‘treat people with respect’ and with no ‘rudeness’ may have been taken on board, as even Javid seemed keen to take part in the new regime. Discussing the leader of the opposition,

Last night’s episode of Question Time saw David Dimbleby relocate to Cardiff to join Charlotte Church, Charles Moore, Stephen Crabb, Labour’s Stephen Kinnock and Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood for a Welsh debate. While questions were raised about the future of Plaid Cymru after a lacklustre election result, the first topic on the agenda touched on whether Jeremy Corbyn could still be Prime Minister now he has said that he would never, ever use a nuclear weapon. With Kinnock struggling to defend Corbyn’s comments while also sticking to his own views supporting nuclear weapons as a deterrent, it fell to Corbynista Church to praise the Labour leader’s comments as ‘commendable’: ‘I think that it’s commendable. I think that if nuclear warfare

Hats off to John McDonnell. We’ve all been fretting about how the Corbyn gang would cope against the media slick Tories. We all think that, despite the appeal of conviction politics, a shadow chancellor such as McDonnell will be eaten alive by the Tory front bench. John McDonnell’s performance on BBC Question Time last night suggested otherwise. Question Time is a good test for politicians: they have to look and sound passionate while saying nothing much at all. McDonnell did exactly that, and with gusto. He masterfully shrugged off his ‘joke’ about killing Margaret Thatcher. When asked about his support for the IRA, he managed almost simultaneously to apologise and to

The row over what to do with its Short money was the tinderbox for Ukip’s internal tensions. Although the war between Team Farage and Team O’Flynn has been bubbling away for months, the question of what to do with the £650,000 of public funds, combined with Nigel Farage’s un-resignation, kicked off a briefing war that brought these fights into the public domain. But we may have détente between Douglas Carswell and Nigel Farage on state funding. On last night’s Question Time, the Ukip leader — who put in a solid, if not particularly inspiring performance — took the radical step of promising not to take any public funds, which includes the Short money: ‘I’m going

In today’s election podcast special, Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss the most significant moments during the campaign this week. Did Ed Miliband’s interview with Russell Brand make any impact? Which moments of the Question Time special will be remembered? And what might happen one week today if the Conservatives are unable to form a government? You can subscribe to the View from 22 through iTunes and have it delivered to your computer or iPhone every week, or you can use the player below:

Ed Miliband’s worst moment in the Question Time debate came when he refused to accept that Labour had spent too much before the crash. The audience reacted with fury: how could he be trusted if he has yet to work out what he did wrong? This is toxic for him because his denial is completely genuine: he has convinced himself that the debt crisis is unconnected to what he got up to when serving in HM Treasury. listen to ‘Ed Miliband says Labour did not overspend in government’ on audioBoom