Last night was a politics pantomime everyone had been waiting for – finally Dimbleby had bagged Russell Brand and Nigel Farage on Question Time – and it wasn’t a disappointment.
Well, it was in the sense that nothing really important got said – but hey, there were loads of good bits, after a fairly lukewarm start. And Mary Creagh and Penny Mordaunt were interesting, even if Russell did keep interrupting Penny by calling her ‘love’ in the most patronising way possible.
To catch up with what everyone will be chatting about this morning, here are the best (and key) quotes from Nigel v Russell:
Russell’s response to someone in the audience (finally) asking Nigel on Question Time. While it’s a good metaphor, Russ didn’t actually engage with the question – which was to do with the country being overcrowded, Farage’s main point. Which was never properly settled, because the audience started jeering and booing and talking among themselves.
After saying Russell should stand for MP after rallying the audience into a frenzy with slogans and neat revolutionary ideas, the comedian’s response was a bit feeble, ‘It’ll turn me into one of them [a corrupt MP].’ We sort of wanted him to explain why joining the system wouldn’t help change it from the inside, rather than calling to abolish the whole thing which would inevitably cause chaos.
Nobody really came out of this looking very good – Russell had transformed into a caricature of himself, assassinating Farage’s character and attacking his ‘booze and fags down the pub’ persona, but not fully engaging with specific ideas.
Nigel explained his immigration policy and instead of engaging, Russell immediately called out the MPs, Parliament and Westminster for corruption and exploitation rather than dealing with UKIP’s most problematic policy – rallying the audience into a frenzy rather than having a debate. He also sounded way more childlike and Dickensian than normal. But fair enough, the whole world was watching and he was probably incredibly nervous. Still, it would have been way more interested to see a political debate rather than a bear pit.
Just a taster of the sort of stuff that went on last night. One woman trying to make a point, paused and bellowed, ‘You are the rudest person I have ever met,’ to another audience member who was saying lord knows what, and the whole explosion caused Penny Mordaunt to be a bit wary about voicing her support for border control, ‘Feeling’s running high… What the public want is control.’ Well, yeah, you can say that again.
Brand had to apologise for his ‘sexist language’ after interrupting Penny Mordaunt by calling her ‘love’ during the debate. He also insisted on referring to everyone as ‘mate’, which started to grate after a while – and also highlighted how he’s using just the same tropes and tricks to distance himself from politicians, and show he’s just a man of the people, as they do to win voters.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.