A few days ago, someone uploaded a whole episode of BBC programme Question Time from 2002 up on YouTube. I have long given up on Question Time as there are now so many better programmes to watch. Gradually, the programme has transformed from a cutting edge forum for debate between intellectual leviathans into something more akin to the Tufty Club. Comparing what it was with what it has become is like comparing vindaloo with korma curry. It is a bland serving of vacuous views and, already terminally ill, it was dealt the death knell by the Covid-19 panic.
I once attended a recording of Question Time many years ago at The Barbican Centre in London. At that time, it was under the stewardship of David Dimbleby. We arrived early, then Dimbleby and his entourage of fawning young female assistants scoured the audience for suitable people to ask questions. We had been invited to submit questions in advance and a group of us there had done so in the hope of probing the panellists on issues of interest to us. We were not picked, and any impression that the presenter picks people at random from the audience when they raise their hand is an illusion. It is all organised in advance. Nevertheless, despite forgetting completely who all the panellists were except Roy Hattersley, I recall being hugely entertained. Something I can barely imagine were I to attend these days.
Returning to the 2002 episode, which I urge you to watch, there was the usual assortment of bland politicians who toed their party lines and said completely forgettable things: Francis Maude, Matthew Taylor and Janet Ryder. But these lightweights were knocked out of the ring by Tony Benn, then a former MP, and journalist Peter Hitchens. I always loved Tony Benn. On one issue he was as sound as a bell and that was our membership of the European Union. He was totally opposed to it based on democracy and national sovereignty. His ‘five questions’ for anyone representing us should be taught in schools and committed to memory. Otherwise, from his mouth spouted more bullshit than from the rear end of an Aberdeen Angus but it mattered not. He was always passionate, always interesting, unfailingly polite, and never made personal attacks or accusations. He responded to every letter sent to him, by hand, and I still have some in my files from my own correspondence with him.
In a similar vein of passion, interest and politeness, Peter Hitchens is—or was—always worth listening to. Not only are his views sound, but they are also backed up with such a store of facts: dates; names; amounts; and consequences, that to listen is to be educated. His views do not always appear consistent with his conservative stance but, like Tony Benn, it served to demonstrate his independence of mind, fearlessness in expressing his views and his absolute disdain for popularity.
I said above that he ‘was’ worth listening to by which I meant if you want to listen to him now, you will no longer be able to do that on Question Time or any other outlet of the mainstream media. He has been banished along with anyone expressing views contrary to the Covid-19 narrative. Almost the only significant place you can listen regularly to Peter Hitchens is on his weekly Hitchen’s Half Hour with Mike Graham on TALK TV (formerly talkRADIO). Here he is given free rein to express his views on the folly of lockdown and the ridiculousness of the unseemly panic that ensued the appearance of a virus the effects of which were greatly exaggerated. Other places to hear Peter Hitchens are the New Culture Forum (although YouTube removed his first interview) and on Triggernometry.
It is the stock-in-trade of those of us of a conservative disposition to look back and think that everything was better in the past. But some things really were.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
