The best approach to take on the BBC’s Question Time is to deal in simplicities, banalities and cant while remembering to utter the observation, every 30 seconds: “Tories are bastards and responsible for every ill in the world.”
I did a bit of that myself last week on the show, desperate as ever to be loved by the audience, however briefly, while the Conservative Party panellist — the former minister Rachel Maclean — sat there and stoically took it, pelted with abuse from every quarter. I felt a little guilty afterwards and watched with regret as she dodged the post-show buffet, preferring to get the hell out in her evil Torymobile, which presumably runs on a fuel made from rendered puppy dogs.
I couldn’t quite
