Who’s on the BBC’s Question Time tonight?

Nadhim Zahawi

Who? Junior business minister

The co-founder of polling firm YouGov – which is always good for getting Twitter’s more enthusiastic conspiracy theorists wound up – Zahawi was a reluctant Brexiteer who wrote for Conservative Home prior to the EU referendum that ‘there are some extremely unattractive figures campaigning to leave the EU from George Galloway to Nigel Farage and it pains me to be dragged towards them on any issue’. Since transformed into a enthusiastic flag-waver for the hardest possible exit upon discovering the remarkable effect adopting such a position can have on one’s ministerial career. This week dismissed warnings from Nissan that its Sunderland car plant could be threatened in the event of a no-deal Brexit at the end of the year as ‘posturing’ in remarks which will absolutely not come back to bite him on the backside next year.

David Lammy

Who? Shadow justice secretary

Lammy succeeded Richard Burgon as Labour’s shadow justice secretary this year which, as a Spurs fan, he will appreciate is a bit like swapping Tim Sherwood for Mauricio Pochettino. One of the 35 Labour MPs who nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the party leadership in 2015 despite not wanting him to win, he went to atone by being one of the most vocal anti-Brexit voices on the backbenches. Last night rebuked former shadow cabinet member Barry Gardiner for boasting of breaking social distancing rules to attend a Black Lives Matter protest, saying: ‘It is dangerous and that’s why I haven’t joined the protests because I don’t want to do anything that contributes to loss of life and that’s why it’s dangerous. But at the same time, the seriousness of this moment, the seriousness of these murders, effectively, of black men in the United States, is a serious business that I am pleased that people are rising up against.’

Donna Kinnair

Who? Chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing

Leader of the nurses’ union since 2018, Kinnair has been a vocal media presence throughout the coronavirus pandemic, this week calling for the publication of a delayed review into black, Asian and minority ethnic deaths related to the virus. She said: ‘The Public Health England review must be published as a matter of urgency. Every day we go without knowing why BAME health and care staff are disproportionately affected by Covid-19 is another day these workers are needlessly put at extra risk.’ Has also cautioned the UK government of rushing out of lockdown, saying that her members were ‘anxious that easing lockdown could undo the progress we’ve made as a country in combatting this virus’. Conspiracy-seeking Boris-backers on Twitter may note that her surname is a portmanteau of two Labour leaders since 1983.

Hugh Pennington

Who? Emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen

A leading bacteriology expert who chaired enquiries into E.coli outbreaks in Scotland in 1996 and Wales in 2005, Pennington was also a founder member of the World Food Programme Technical Advisory Group. This means that 50% of tonight’s panel might actually know what they’re talking about: the campaign to bring back Pace from Hale and Pace (one episode, September 1998) starts here. Has said there is no evidence to suggest a coronavirus second wave is coming, writing in the Daily Telegraph: ‘Defeatist flu models still lurk behind current Covid-19 predictions. That the virus will persist for ages is a flu concept. These predictions should be put to one side. Like Sars, and unlike flu, the virus is eradicable.’ Hopefully history will prove those words to be considerably more prescient than Zahawi’s casual dismissal of Nissan’s no-deal Brexit warning.

Question Time is on BBC One at 10.45pm tonight (11.25pm in Northern Ireland)