The BBC and the Labour Party

Last night I settled down to watch the weekly mudslinging which of late has come to characterise Question Time only to be confronted with what I can only describe to be a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of the Labour Party. The five contenders for the party leadership were given around one hour of prime time television to ostensibly make the case for why they should be chosen as the next leader of the Labour Party, but how big is the legitimate audience for this. As a non-member I do not have a vote as to who becomes party leader so a leadership hustings debate really was of no relevance to me nor I suspect was it relevant to the majority of the viewing audience. I have my own views as to who might be the best leader for the party and who might be the worst, but as I do not have a vote in the outcome it is irrelevant. I await the outcome and then along with everybody else who is not a member of the Labour Party, will try to live with that outcome.
If we assume the party has a membership of 250,000 souls then this was the maximum audience to which a leadership hustings could be relevant. As somebody who is not a member of any political party, the only information this programme was able to impart to me was how wrong the coalition government is in everything it says or does. There was not a single voice raised in opposition to this viewpoint. It did inform me of differences between the candidates on a number of issues but as I have no vote, these nuances were wasted on me and I suspect most of the audience.
It is vitally important that those who do have a vote, and especially those with several votes such as Harriet Dromey, are informed as to the respective candidates merits and policies but at what point is it the responsibility of the BBC to provide a platform for such a narrow audience. Will they give over a whole show to the candidates for the leadership of the BNP when they next choose their new fuehrer? I think not.
I suspect that a significant proportion of those who are entitled to vote in the elections for Leader of the Labour Party will have now made up their mind as to their preferences and cast their ballot accordingly, for those who have already committed, last night’s show was also irrelevant; in fact Question Time last night was really only of relevance to those who have not made up their minds and how few in number are they?
I appreciate that the choice of Labour leader will become of relevance to me in a little over four years time and I will take note of what they say and do in the period between their being anointed as Leader and the next General Election but until the leader is chosen I do not want to see countless hours of coverage of Labour’s internal squabbling funded through the licence fee particularly when most of what is said is an attack on the parties currently in power.
Maybe in the spirit of balance we can have a future edition of the programme featuring four coalition cabinet ministers and a senior backbencher from one of the coalition parties to promote their agenda. It will be equally valueless but it will at least restore some semblance of balance to the output of the BBC which for many years has been sadly lacking.