It’s Thursday, it’s 10.35 pm … it’s BBC1’s Question Time.
The series opens tonight in Bournemouth, setting of this week’s Lib Dem conference. The party’s representative is David Laws, the MP for Yeovil who succeeded Paddy Ashdown. A leading light of the ‘Orange Bookers’, who aroused the hostility of may Lib Dem activists for proposing a social insurance model for healthcare in the lead-up to the 2005 general election, he has gained growing respect even among his critics for his forensic approach to education policy as the Lib Dems’ shadow secretary of state for children, schools and families.
Joining David on the panel will be deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman, Tory peer Lord (Michael) Helestine, former Minister of State for Trade Lord (Digby) Jones, and the new editor of the Spectator, Fraser Nelson.
If you’re tuning in, you can join the simultanous online Twitter debate here at #bbcqt, or the LDV debate in the thread below. Meanwhile Lib Dem blogger Mark Thompson will be liveblogging events via CoverItLive at his own blog.