Question Time with Fiona Bruce

Fiona Bruce was the hero of the left last week for robustly challenging a Tory MP, but is now being attacked for treating a Labour MP in the same way.



The PR team have rather chucked Bruce under the bus I feel. The majority of opinion polls have shown a Conservative lead for months, even when the Government have been in a total mess. It was entirely reasonable for Bruce to tackle Abbott on her claim.

The repeated claims that Abbott is the victim of racist abuse from the media is lazy and extremely damaging.

Sorry but that's not quite right. She's had a number of TV appearances where she's gaffed on figures, given a speech and walked off the stage in the wrong direction and has been caught using racially provocative language herself and been challenged about it by Andrew Neill. She gets the same amount of stick levelled at her as Boris Johnson does.

The example of Boris is an apt one, in particular because a few days after Diannes famous gaffe, he did almost exactly the same a couple of days later.


She does get treated very differently though. In political satire yes she is fair game (and she does get an affectionate portrayal on Dead Ringers) but outside of that she does get a lot more abuse than her peers, a lot of it very nasty and vitriolic.

A lot of that is because she's female and an ethnic minority, that's not a lazy excuse that's just sad fact. Social media, in particular Twitter, is a cesspit and women who come to prominence have to put up with a level of abuse that no man would get

No, Boris is portrayed as a lovable bumbling eccentric... ah bless he's insulted a minority, put a woman in jail, cheated on his wife... Oh Boris!!


Abbott is portrayed as an incompetent simpleton.... she's got some sums wrong or walked off stage wrong.... what a stupid incompetent cow.

[quote="Inspector Sands" pid="1151474"][quote="A former member" pid="1151463"]

Not quite true either. A number of senior male MPs have had death threats levelled at them on social media. Boris Johnson gets a daily diet of abuse on Twitter as does Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage. The Labour MP Stephen Timms was also stabbed.

I'm no supporter of Nigel Farage but the threats he and his family have suffered over the years have been horrendous and disgusting (in one instance his car was written off) - yet Anna Soubry gets called some disgusting language in the public and suddenly there needs to be a law passed to protect political figures from abuse.

I seem to recall Boris Johnson getting an utter hammering politically, publically and in the media for his mishandling of said incident. He certainly wasn't branded as a lovable bafoon over that.

Seriously that complaint makes me think of the Constable Savage sketch from Not The Nine O Clock News

For a few hours until the news cycle moved on.


Dianne Abbots maths is an internet meme (though of course Boris has done many more notable things to parody)

You can't say that prominent male figures get anywhere near the level of violent or offensive sexual abuse that female ones get online. It's a well documented and reported phenomenon, and not just in the UK



Yes, I suppose if he was in government, or even in Parliament it might have been different (certainly the parliament he is a representative in isn't going to help him! ).


I'm not saying that white male politicians have it easy, but those that aren't have it even less easy. A lot of that is just racist if mashogonist a-holes hiding behind a computer and programming he Russian bots. But a lot comes from the culture that pervades the commons and the establishment in general.

She’s made no worse gaffs than a lot of other male political figures and they don’t always get the crap she does.

There’s no doubt that Abbott gets more abuse on Twitter, and I’m sure part of the reason why is race. What I actually referred to as lazy was accusations of racism in the media itself. The suggestion that organisations like the BBC are ‘legitimising racist abuse’ by tackling a well known politician on a show involving debate is ridiculous. Interrupting somebody on a question based format is not indicative of racism. Making these claims, rather than simply accepting an interview/appearance didn’t go particularly well, is damaging in that it reduces focus on genuine instances of racist abuse.

The BBC and/or Fiona Bruce have no need to make an apology, and should not do so in my opinion.

What gets me most is that so few can spell her bloody name correctly!!! It's Diane Abbott. One N and two Ts.

Same with Olivia Colman!!