My 2023 open letter to the BBC about Question Time, read by more than 300,000 people in 144 countries, was widely reported in the media. It even informed questions posed to the BBC’s director general Tim Davie at a parliamentary select committee. Last week, the BBC once again gave a platform to Nigel Farage, appearing on Question Time for the 38th time.
Before my analysis, I’d like to highlight an internet adage, coined in 2013 by Alberto Brandolini, known as the ‘bullshit principle’, or ‘bullshit asymmetry principle’:
“The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.”
In other words, debunking misinformation takes a lot of effort.
Immigration and BBC Question Time
The main criticisms of BBC Question Time in my original February 2023 article were:
- Poor and biased chairing, including tolerance of panellists who continually interrupt.
- Ambiguity about the audience’s political demographic.
- Well-evidenced bias toward platforming panellists from right-leaning media.
The BBC’s desire to drive engagement means that, in my opinion, Question Time is now overly dependent on platforming guests known for generating division, soundbites, and polarising controversy, rather than engaging in nuanced, respectful and informative debate. I believe this compromises its duty to inform and educate the public.
By examining the episode broadcast on 5 December 2024, we can see how political and media discourse and rhetoric around immigration (especially on ‘flagship’ TV political shows at the BBC and elsewhere) is demeaning, infantilising, polarising, and often profoundly misleading.
Other than Farage, the panellists that night were Jacqui Smith (Labour MP), Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative MP) and Alistair Campbell (Labour, author and podcaster).
Nigel Farage as a favoured BBCQT guest
Despite being an MP for just five months, Farage is the joint sixth-most platformed panellist on BBC Question Time, appearing 38 times and averaging 1.6 appearances per year. Yet host Fiona Bruce introduced him by saying “making his second appearance as a panellist since 2019”.
Farage is a populist politician and skilled user of a range of proven rhetorical devices. The 2021 book The Routledge Companion to Media Disinformation and Populism explores how recent transformations in public communication and digital media support the ‘polarised, anti-rational, post-fact, post-truth communication’ championed by populists like Farage and Trump.
Framing the debate
The BBC Question Time audience questions frame issues for debate. The first question of the evening referenced Keir Starmer’s speech in which he’d outlined his ‘six milestones’. Farage used his opening contribution to reframe the question, firstly attempting to use humour to negatively contrast Starmer’s rhetorical style with his own, and then to bring the debate onto his own preferred topic – ploys described over two millennia ago by Cicero in On the Orator.
George Lakoff, in The ALL NEW Don’t Think of an Elephant! (2014), says:
“When you argue against someone on the other side using their language and their frames, you are activating their frames, strengthening their frames in those who hear you, and undermining your own views.”
Farage therefore reframed the issue onto the terrain he really wanted to discuss:
“The single biggest issue in terms of the impact on accessibility to GP services, housing, infrastructure, is the exploding population… the six milestones didn’t even mention immigration, the boats, or anything!”
The use of interruption
Bruce invited Labour’s Smith to respond to an audience member’s criticism of Labour’s purported lack of preparation for government. Hollinrake interrupted, saying “that’s absolute rubbish!”
I want to highlight the interruption – not the issue. Farage seized the opportunity to aggressively address Smith, opportunistically articulating his anti-welfare state, pro-free-market ideology: “If you [Labour] hadn’t given massive pay rises to train drivers and public sector workers those pensioners would still have their fuel allowance!”
Asylum costs
Farage asserted that Britain spent a record £5.4bn on its asylum system last year. This figure covered all Home Office asylum costs and was not caused by and is not the fault of the Labour Party. It includes cash support and accommodation, plus wider staffing and other related migration and border activity. It is due mainly to the number of asylum seekers awaiting their asylum claim to be processed, with those in receipt of support rising from 51,000 in 2019/20 to 114,000 in 2024.
I’ve previously addressed this huge cost in this detailed thread.
The escalating costs are driven by the rising claims backlog and the lack of available ‘dispersal accommodation’, resulting in the costly use of hotel rooms. The costs are currently around £145 per night per person, compared to only £14 for dispersal accommodation.
The Institute for Public Policy Research highlights a lack of effective oversight of contracts given to private providers of asylum accommodation.
Neither Farage nor Bruce were inclined to mention ANY of this.
Immigration, immigration and more immigration
The second question of the evening was about balancing border control with welcoming diversity and addressing pressure on local communities and services. New figures estimated net migration to the UK in the year to June 2024 fell to 728,000.
Hollinrake insisted that immigration “controls can be put in place very, very quickly”, despite being in a government since 2015 that completely failed to do so, and went on to make the completely unevidenced claim that the Rwanda Plan was a deterrent.
Farage then criticised the Tories for failing to bring net migration down to the tens of thousands.
The truth about immigration
Farage claimed that only 16% of non-EU migrants are working: this is misleading. Studies show:
- Immigration’s fiscal impact is positive overall and represents less than 1% of GDP.
- Recent migrants have a more positive economic impact than longer-term residents.
- Non-EU-born workers have always outnumbered EU-born workers, even when the UK was in the EU.
No one in the programme mentioned any of this important contextualising information, nor that in the 2022/23 academic year there were 758,855 international students studying at UK universities, with a total net benefit of £37.4bn to the UK economy.
Farage acknowledged that selective immigration once supported diversity and the economy but now describes immigration as a “catastrophe,” claiming it harms public services and Britain’s economy.
It is unfortunate that important historical context rarely gets mentioned in the frequently recurring discussions about immigration on BBC Question Time. Farage ended this segment with rhetoric about “taking back control”, echoing all too familiar Brexit-era messaging.
Immigration lies
Hollinrake points out that following the Covid-19 pandemic, people arrived from Hong Kong and Ukraine. He asked Farage “which of those people would you have not let into the country?”. Farage responded, “In 2023 we were not taking people from Ukraine or Hong Kong!” This lie went unchallenged. In the year ending December 2023, the ONS estimated 35,000 arrivals from Hong Kong and 10,000 from Ukraine totalling more than those arriving by small boat in 2024 (33,684 as of 1 December).
When Campbell again mentioned Brexit, Farage interrupted, saying “Oh here we go…” Campbell continued, “Brexit was about getting your borders under control, but since Brexit we have lost control…”.
“Why?” Farage interrupted.
Campbell claimed that when he was “growing up there were 20 working people for every pensioner, but now there are fewer than three, so the idea that we can cope with our ageing population and a low birth-rate without understanding we have to get people from abroad coming to work here…” Farage again interrupted: “If they work!”
Campbell continued: “That’s why” [Farage interrupted again, “if they work”] “you have to fix the rules, fix the system, but for heaven’s sake, if we follow this sort of demonising immigrants rhetoric of Trump and Farage” Farage laughed at this and said “Oh dear”, Campbell continued: “we will put people off…” [Farage interrupted yet again to say “they [Labour and Tories] are in trouble”] “…even wanting to come here to work.”
The need for immigrants
Despite Farage’s interruptions, Campbell continued: “So let’s be open and honest about the need for migration. Let’s get the rules and systems in place and make it work. But let’s stop demonising anybody who is not what we consider to be British.”
The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford confirmed that net migration for the year ending June 2024 was “driven primarily by high demand for workers in the health and care sector and an increase in international student numbers.”
Bruce then took a comment from an audience member: “I don’t believe in ANY asylum, I really don’t, I think we have taken more than our fair share… I think there’s far too much made of this ‘that they’re fleeing wars’”. Campbell responded to her: “In terms of numbers of asylum seekers we are fifth in Europe.” Farage AGAIN interrupted, “NO!”
In fact, for 2023, compared to EU countries plus Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, adjusted for population size, the UK ranked 20th. By way of comparison, in 2023, Germany had 351K asylum applicants (the UK: 80K) granting protection to 135,000 people (UK: 62,000). There were 13 asylum applicants for every 10K people resident in the UK. The EU27 average is 25 for every 10,000 people. We granted protection to nine asylum seekers/10K pop.
Despite decades of discussion of immigration, many Britons still lack basic knowledge about the topic, which reflects a failure of the BBC and other media. For instance, many voters don’t know the difference between asylum seekers (those seeking international protection while awaiting legal determination of their status) and refugees (who have been granted protection after legal recognition).
Smith expressed pride in Britain’s tradition of providing shelter to those fleeing horrific circumstances and claimed that Labour are accelerating asylum claims, increasing returns and promoting integration. However, her 2008 claim that Iran was safe for “discreet” gays remains controversial.
Populist policies demonising migrants
Audience member David Hellier from Lincoln (where the episode was broadcast from) – neither “a plant”, nor “a journalist”, contrary to numerous unsupported claims on X – made a significant comment. He related a recent visit to a Holocaust centre near Newark, which he described as a real wake-up call.
Drawing a parallel to Germany in the 1930s, he recounted how economic hardships after the first world war left people desperate and open to the lies that Jewish people were to blame. He warned that in the UK, we are now blaming migrants for issues such as austerity, or Brexit, or for Liz Truss’s failure of leadership, recalling how populist policies enabled the rise of Adolf Hitler.
Initially ignoring Hellier’s thoughtful remarks, Farage claimed that the last Labour government deported tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, implying the current government wouldn’t – a misleading statement. Then, after Bruce reminded Farage of the point made earlier that we should take no asylum seekers, he responded with another falsehood: “We’ve ALWAYS opened our doors as a country, MORE THAN ANYBODY IN THE WORLD!”
Britain’s role in supporting refugees and asylum seekers
There are two profoundly misleading claims here. Concerning the latter – that Britain has “opened our doors… MORE THAN ANYBODY IN THE WORLD”. Turkey and Iran host the largest number of refugees, with 3.4 million people each, followed by Colombia, which hosts 2.9 million Venezuelans. Farage’s claim that Britain has “always opened our doors as a country” simply does not align with historical facts.
Farage’s use of the word ‘doors’ rather than ‘borders’ activates different framings of the asylum issue. Only the ill-informed or those willing to twist history would make such unqualified, divisive and misleading claims about asylum seekers, as those made regularly by Farage, many Tory and Labour MPs, and the entire right-wing media.
Bruce asked Farage if he agreed that we shouldn’t take ANY asylum seekers. Farage responded, “Well, genuine refugees we’ve always taken, we’ve done it for Jewish people, for Huguenots… what’s happening right now is they are not genuine refugees, and that really is the point.”
However, most people arriving by small boat ARE genuine refugees. For the year ending September 2024, 66% of asylum applications from small boat arrivals were granted, higher than the general asylum rate of 52%. Despite Farage’s claims, many English were hostile to the Huguenots and Jewish people when they had arrived here. Farage’s misleading claim about small boat arrivals not being ‘genuine’ refugees went unchallenged.
Comparison to 1930s Germany
At this point, Campbell compared Trump’s language about immigrants to 1930s Germany, saying Trump used terms such as ‘vermin’ and ‘poisoning our blood’. Farage AGAIN interrupted and talked over him, claiming that Trump is very pro-legal immigration. In 2017, the Trump administration embraced the (defeated) RAISE Act, which sought to reduce levels of legal immigration to the US by 50%.
Farage insisted Hellier was talking about Jewish people, the Holocaust, and genuine refugees – these are different things!” But Hellier clarified he was talking about migrants and accused Farage of focusing disproportionately on the 40,000 irregular asylum seekers (4% of all migrants) as opposed to the one million migrants. Farage replied (sarcastically) “Oh let them all come in!” Hellier said: “Every asylum seeker I’ve spoken to, everybody who’s come here for asylum, they’re not coming here for a better life, the majority of them are coming for ‘a’ life.” “No”, replied Farage, “I’m sorry, you’re wrong!”
Farage’s populist rhetoric
Farage’s rhetoric on immigration includes humour, obfuscation, aggression, interruption, misrepresentation of facts, and outrageous lies (almost all of which went unchallenged and uncorrected on his 38th BBCQT appearance). He uses these rhetorical techniques to misleadingly frame debate about immigration. While some concerns about immigration, such as the cost and conditions of housing asylum seeker are legitimate, inflammatory and misleading rhetoric can goad or even radicalise people. This only fuels declining levels of trust in democracy and, as we saw in August, can incite violent extremism.
Populist politicians exploit and often deliberately exacerbate the complex issue of immigration by offering simplistic ‘explanations’ and unworkable ‘solutions’, deeply dividing the countries they claim to love in the process. The same divisive media, Tufton Street think tanks, and populist politicians that falsely promised Brexit would reduce immigration are now falsely claiming that leaving the European Convention on Human Rights would mean we could ‘take back control’ of our borders.
It’s another simplistic, manipulative lie. Despite extensive media coverage, public understanding of immigration remains low, overwhelmed by misleading claims, disinformation and lies. Labour’s strategy of aping right-wing rhetoric risks alienating voters and strengthening Reform UK. It’s electoral suicide.
Countering the rhetoric of the right
To address Britain’s problems, Labour must counter the rhetoric of the right, reduce polarisation, and better understand the issues our country faces. The BBC too must fulfil its mission “to act in the PUBLIC INTEREST, serving ALL audiences… to INFORM, EDUCATE, and entertain”. BBC Question Time, often complicit in spreading disinformation, must stop ‘celebrating ignorance’ – as Carl Sagan had it in The Demon-Haunted World. Media ownership, funding and regulation require urgent reform if Labour hopes to rebuild trust and to fix Britain.
I stand by the words in my 2023 open letter about BBCQT:
“Britain needs the BBC. Along with the National Health Service it is one of the few genuinely unifying public institutions we have left, and along with the NHS, it is the envy of the world.
“The BBC helps to protect and enhance Britain’s global reputation, and it helps hold the country together, especially, as we have seen over the last few years, in times of crisis – and Britain currently faces multiple crises.”
