Who is on the BBC Question Time panel tonight?

Liz Truss

Who? Chief secretary to the Treasury

Where is she on Brexit? Backed Remain in the referendum but has since changed her mind, saying warnings of ‘massive economic problems’ had ‘not come to pass’ despite Brexit having, you know, not happened yet

Remainer turned enthusiastic Leaver who described the Brexit talks last month as being in the ‘darkness before the dawn’, Truss was one of the eight Cabinet ministers who met for pizza the night before a crucial Cabinet meeting on Theresa May’s strategy. A former environment secretary, she came under fire after moving to Justice in 2016 when she was accused by the legal profession of failing to defend the judges accused of being “enemies of the people” by the Daily Mail over the Article 50 legal case. Founder of the pro-market Free Enterprise Group, her name remains indelibly linked with two things: calling for children to learn “the proper names of animals” and a meme-spawning speech in 2014 when she reacted to the news Britain imported two thirds of its cheese with the staccato delivery: “That. Is. A. Disgrace.”

Andy McDonald

Who? Quite. Shadow transport secretary, apparently

Where is he on Brexit? Soft Remainer. Broadly sympathetic to the EU but aware that his Middlesbrough constituents voted to leave by 65.5%

Shadow Cabinet member so spectacularly inept you almost certainly haven’t heard of him, despite the fact he shadows the hapless Chris Grayling and pretty much anyone else would have had his head on a stick ages ago. Former councillor who was brought into Jeremy Corbyn’s top team in 2016 when everybody else quit and has since made as much an impression in the role as Val Kilmer’s long-forgotten portrayal of Batman. Speaks rarely on Brexit but when he does it’s on-message platitudes, telling a parliamentary reception last week that Labour would “press to retain a customs union relationship with the EU”, a position which is as mystifying as it is untenable. A jobbing backbencher in any normal Parliament, McDonald is this week’s Person You Forgot Was Even On The Panel Within Two Minutes Of It Finishing.

Anne McElvoy

Who? Journalist and senior editor at The Economist

Where is she on Brexit? Her Evening Standard columns are “soft Remainy”. But The Economist came out early and firmly against Brexit and continues to rage against it in its pages

Experienced and respected journalist who has been at the magazine which continues to mystifyingly insist it’s a newspaper since 2009, McElvoy is also a columnist at George Osborne’s Evening Standard where she attempts to untangle the government’s ill-starred Brexit negotiations. Wrote last month that “Theresa May’s endgame is so painful to watch because it combines the grave consequences of failed Brexit negotiations with the improbable comedy of operetta”. Warned earlier this year that “whatever the Remain campaign’s strategy is, it needs to be careful not to end up fronted and funded primarily by the super-wealthy and 21st-century equivalents of the Whigs, all meeting in the same salons with wealthy patrons footing the bill”. This week’s token person who might actually know what they’re talking about.

Kate Andrews

Who? Associate director of free-market think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs

Where is she on Brexit? Brexit cheerleader on the Liam Fox swashbucklin’ Global Britain wing

Previously head of communications at the Adam Smith Institute and staffer on Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful presidential campaign, Andrews is tonight’s panellist who will get a fawning write-up on the Express’ website tomorrow for TAKING DOWN REMOANERS by reminding them they lost the referendum. Told the audience on a previous appearance last December that Britain would be “richer if you use the process of Brexit to be optimistic and to try and pursue the best deals possible” – the sort of detailed analysis which earns one the think tank big bucks. Has suggested that the no-deal Hard Brexit favoured by some on the Tory right wouldn’t be a disaster, saying: “I don’t think that a bare-bones Brexit would be the end of the world.” An American, she wrote touchingly last month that “I can celebrate from both sides of the pond the opportunities Brexit creates”.

Shappi Khorsandi

Who? Comedian and author

Where is she on Brexit? Anti. Has said “We live in this social media bubble and then something [like Brexit] happens and the Left went ‘What, not everyone thinks like me?'”

Stand-up comic of Iranian origin best known among the general public for a stint on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! last year when she was the first voted out, officially making her less popular than Dennis Wise. A fully paid-up Corbynista, she was part of the #JC4PM tour last year when the Absolute Boy and his celebrity supporters travelled to venues across the country literally preaching to the converted. Wrote earlier this year: “Whether we get a second referendum or whether Trump ever grows a backbone and tries our fish and chips, the left needs to take a proper look at itself and question why the likes of Farage and Trump gained such massive popularity in the first place, leading us in turn to spend so much time making placards and chanting ourselves hoarse.” There’s no time for that sort of nuanced thinking on Question Time.

Question Time is on BBC One at 10.45pm tonight (11.20pm in Northern Ireland).

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