galloway to be on question time this week

[luke]

Question Time, the BBC's premier political debate programme chaired by David Dimbleby, will be in Norwich on Thursday 23 July.

The panel will include the former Secretary of State for Defence Geoff Hoon MP, the Conservative shadow minister for community cohesion Baroness Warsi, the veteran politician and former leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords Baroness Williams, the writer and broadcaster Clive James and the Respect MP George Galloway.



Geoff Hoon

Career: Geoff Hoon is the former Secretary of State for Defence. A senior member of the Labour government from 1997 to 2009, he has held a number of other roles, including Secretary of State for Transport.

He entered politics with his election as the member of the European Parliament for Derbyshire in 1984, before returning to the UK and becoming MP for Ashfield in 1992, joining John Smith's shadow front bench in 1995. After Labour took power in 1997, he held a number of junior ministerial posts, before being promoted to his most famous role as secretary of state for defence.

He was the current government's longest serving defence secretary, holding the post from 1999 to 2005, a period in which he oversaw British military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In 2007, reflecting on the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, he said: "We always anticipated that the resistance, particularly of the criminal and terrorist elements in the south, would be one of the most difficult problems, so it is not surprising that we are facing those kinds of attacks in the south. That was always anticipated and it was always planned for."

He was made Labour's chief whip when Gordon Brown became prime minister in 2007, and moved to transport following the sudden resignation of Ruth Kelly last year. He resigned from the cabinet in June.



Baroness Warsi

Career: Sayeeda Warsi is the Conservative shadow minister for community cohesion.

A British-born Muslim of Pakistani origin, she was a former race adviser to Michael Howard and has also been vice chair of the Conservative Party with responsibility for taking the party's message to the inner cities. She is the youngest member of the House of Lords, as well as the first Muslim member of a shadow cabinet.

In December 2007, she came to international attention when she took a leading role in the successful mission to the Sudan to secure the release of the British teacher, Gillian Gibbons.

When she joined the House of Lords in October 2007, she used her maiden speech to highlight the plight of women in Afghanistan, saying that, while she acknowledged that "some progress" had been made, "whenever we go to war, we must ensure that our actions leave women safer and stronger, and we must ensure that never again do we allow women to be abused on our watch in a country that we have invaded to make better."



Baroness Williams

Career: Shirley Williams is a veteran politician who was leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords until November 2004.

She was originally elected to Parliament as the Labour MP for Hitchen in 1964, having been the general secretary of the Fabian Society since 1960. She served in the governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan in the 1960s and 1970s, and held the roles of both secretary of state for education and science, and paymaster general, from 1976 to 1979.

In 1981 she was one of the "Gang of Four", who left the Labour Party to co-found the Social Democratic Party. She was president of the SDP from 1982 and 1988, and supported the party's decision to merge with the Liberal Party in 1988 to create the Liberal Democrats.

After losing her seat in the 1983 election, she forged a career in academia, taking high-profile posts at Harvard University, Cambridge, Princeton, and Berkley.

She was awarded a life peerage in 1993 and subsequently served as leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords from 2001 to 2004.



Clive James

Career: Clive James is an internationally renowned writer and broadcaster. He was born in Sydney, Australia, and has lived in the UK since 1961.

He has written for numerous publications, including The New Statesman, The New York Times and The New Yorker magazine, and was the Observer's television critic for ten years. He is a bestselling novelist, and has also written collections of travel writing, essays and poetry. His most recent book, Cultural Amnesia: Notes In The Margins Of My Time, was published last year.

He is a well-known face on British television, having presented many of his own programmes, including Fame in the Twentieth Century and his Postcards From series, as well as regularly appearing on shows such as Have I Got News For You and Comic Relief.

In 1992 he was made a member of the Order of Australia, in 1999 an honorary Doctor of Letters of Sydney University, and in 2003 he received Australia's premier award for poetry, the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal.



George Galloway MP

Career: George Galloway is the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow. He hosts a controversial radio show on Talksport.

Having joined the Labour Party as a young activist, he was elected to parliament as the Labour MP for Glasgow Hillhead in 1987. His increasingly outspoken criticism of the party's leadership, which he dismissed as "Tony Blair's lie machine," led to his expulsion from the party in October 2003.

In January 2004, he co-founded Respect, a coalition of left-wing organisations opposed to the Iraq war, and defeated Labour MP Oona King to become MP for Bethnal Green and Bow at the 2005 general election.

In March 2009, he was refused entry to Canada, where he was due to address an audience in Toronto, on the grounds of "national security", a decision which he branded as "idiotic".

Writing in May about the resignation of Commons Speaker Michael Martin, he declared: "English snobbery can do a morris dance of delight at the political demise of the Speaker... for a certain class of Englishman every Catholic is a Mick and every working-class Scot is from the Gorbals."

He went on to say: "Only a new parliament where the public have cast judgment on those who have disgraced our political life can be trusted to set in place the new dispensation.

"We need a revolution in public life."

[faceless]

excellent, I'll cap that for sure.

[modern]

No 'Comment' this week then?

[faceless]

I'll do the whole thing as a 350mb avi for tomorrow.

[modern]

Can't believe someone still has to bring up Big Brother. That was like 2006...surely a BBC plant.

[faceless]

You'd be surprised - I started a thread here last year about how often even the quality papers would still mention it. I doubt the silly little twunt was a plant - he'll have read just enough arsehole blogs to think he'd be taken seriously.

[Colston]

[steveekay]

still proves he's the only good thing aboot politics.

[LongLivetheHuman]

The Big Brother guy was clearly expecting a big round of applause there, haha love it. Anyone who brings up the BB thing against George isn't taken seriously now. Even on his first post-BB QT (just a few months after), David Lammy's "I'd rather be a donkey than a pussycat" jibe sank like a lead balloon, which was not surprising considering it was in the middle of a serious debate on British soldiers dying in Iraq. Desperate!

[modern]