Answer Time

I could not care less where Question Time was notionally based. But I do take issue with the arguments advanced on Radio Four by a former editor of the programme who wants its fax machine or whatever to remain in London.

It needs to be there in order to attract top flight panellists from the parties? What, like last week's Edwina Currie? Don't the parties just send someone, anyway? If not, why not? And they do have email outside London, you know? You don't need anything else to get party panellists now. If you need anything at all.

It needs to be there in order to spot rising stars at Westminster? "I gave David Cameron and George Osborne their big breaks, you know"? Since when the hell was that the BBC's job? And if your idea of talent is George Osborne!

And it needs to be there because that is where the "non-political" panellists are? Well, yes, if you are content with the present celebrity flotsam and jetsam, and people picked at random out of David Dimbleby's high society address book. The editors of, and the political writers on, local and regional newspapers influence huge numbers of votes in the places where General Elections are won and lost, but when have you ever seen them on Question Time?

Or, for that matter, the Leaders of major local authorities, whose decisions have practical consequences of which any backbencher, or many a Minister, cannot dream? That is in no sense an anti-London point. The past and present holders of the largely titular position of Mayor of London are regular ornaments. But the far more considerable Leaders of the Borough Councils are nowhere to be seen.