Question Time

Posted by e-mail:   Normally on Thursday evenings I watch Newsnight, then the last twenty minutes of Question Time, then This Week.   Yesterday, in common with most of the population it seems, I watched Question Time in its entirety (I checked the first five minutes of Newsnight, but I was always going to switch over).   It was a bear garden of a show.  In a provocative move the BBC had invited onto the panel the leader of the United Kingdom's most extreme political party.  The result was reminiscent of the moment in William Dieterle's 1939 feature film The Hunchback of Notre Dame where the freak-monster Quasimodo is baited by the mob.   This is not to show any sympathy for the political extremist.  He knows that the things he says are going to upset people and persumably he is prepared to cope with the response.  But I was disappointed that nothing intelligent was said (by anybody - it was just an hour of incoherent shouting).   I also find it inexplicable that one million adults voted at the European elections for an outmoded ideology that is culturally located in 1930s Germany.  Of all the solutions to the social problems we face, this seems to be the most implausable.  And yet no attempt was made on Question Time to explore this area.   Like most people I tend to steer clear of the subject of immigration.  Mostly because it's a controversial topic, and in the rural fastness of the county it does not touch me in a personal way.  The tide of immigration would have to rise very high before it lapped at my feet.   However, I cannot be unaware of the fact that social cohesion is breaking down and that the low-skilled sections of society have been largely abandoned.   One of the most interesting interventions in last night's programme was from a member of the audience who said that an overseas doctor was happy to work in the United Kingdom as a cleaner.  Instead of exploring this point David Dimbleby just went on to the next ranter.  But it illustrates the fact that for many people globalisation has meant the import to the West of third world standards of pay and conditions (instead of the export of first world pay and conditions).   As the minimum wage is still vastly greater than the average salary in most of the developing world, the pressure to reduce wages and conditions still further (via agencies, temporary contracts and other scams) is going to intensify.  It is against that background that socio-economic groups D and E are going to feel they have nothing to lose by voting for a revolution (and a national-socialist revolution would be a disaster for the rest of us).  Logically either socio-economic groups D and E must be disenfranchised, or globalisation of wages and salaries halted, or extemist parties must be accepted as a permanent and growing component of British elections.