The impartiality of Question Time: An analysis of panellists in 2025
The BBC’s weekly debate political programme, Question Time, has long been a magnet for controversy. And 2025 has been no different, with critics regularly questioning its impartiality, most often because panels do not reflect a fair balance of perspectives from either the right or left of politics.
In this blog, we break down the details of who appeared on Question Time in 2025. This will provide an evidence-based picture of how the programme interpreted impartiality according to the editorial selection of guests over the last year. This is a continuation of an ongoing project led by Dr Matt Walsh tracking Question Time guests since 2014, which was published in Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism at the end of 2025.
We systematically tracked every guest who appeared on Question Time in 2025 and categorised them according to whether they were a politician, journalist, or member of civil society. We subsequently broke down each category by the party they represented, the media organisation they were affiliated with (e.g., The Guardian, Novara Media, The Times), and the role they played in civil society (e.g., business person, celebrity, economist, trade unionist). We then assigned a political orientation (left-leaning, neutral/unknown, right-leaning) to all non-party political guests. To do this, three researchers independently categorised guests by political orientation based on how they were introduced on the programme and their online profile. Where they all agreed, the guest was assigned that orientation. Disagreements were then discussed with the majority view usually being assigned. When no agreement could be reached, or there was not enough information on the guest’s political views, guests were categorised as neutral/unknown.
Make up of guests
In 2025, there were 156 guests on Question Time across 33 episodes. 104 guests (66.7%) were politicians; 29 (18.6%) were journalists; and 23 (14.7%) were members of civic society, primarily business people, trade unionists, economists, or celebrities.
UK party political guests
In 2025, Question Time provided an exact balance between Labour and the Conservatives, as the government and the official opposition, with every episode featuring a representative from both parties. As Matt Walsh’s research has found, this has not always been the case, with programmes in devolved nations sometimes excluding one of Labour or the Conservatives and dissenting backbenchers often being included on panels alongside party colleagues. Between 2014 and 2024, slightly more Conservatives appeared than Labour.
Slots for the other major UK parties are then rotated with the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK, featuring in approximately 1 in 3 episodes. As a result, Liberal Democrat representatives do not regularly debate speakers for Reform UK, with just five episodes featuring both parties throughout 2025.
The other major UK party, the Greens, appeared in just four of 33 programmes in 2025 (12% of episodes). Despite a spike in support in public opinion polls and the party's membership more than doubling since Zack Polanski was elected party leader at the beginning of September 2025, there has been no equivalent increase in Question Time representation. Although this does represent an increase in appearances compared to the analysis of Question Time pre-2024.
Parties across the devolved nations (SNP, Plaid Cymru, DUP, Sinn Féin) only featured in episodes when Question Time was broadcast from Scotland (three episodes), Wales (two episodes) and Northern Ireland (one episode). As a result, they most frequently discussed issues specific to their nation rather than the UK as a whole.
This marks a significant decline in the SNP's status. From 2014-2024, the SNP was the third most featured party, appearing in 7-14 episodes annually and in broadcasts beyond Scotland, more prominently participating in UK-wide political debate. This is likely a reaction to the 39 seats the SNP lost in the 2024 General Election.
Overall, our findings suggest that Question Time has attempted to broadly reflect a combination of Parliamentary make-up and vote share at the most recent election (e.g., Labour and the Conservatives) in 2025 when deciding on the balance of guests for each episode. This contrasts with findings in our recent study of TV bulletin news, where we found that opinion polls and more subjective judgments about newsworthiness appeared to shape decisions about allocating airtime to parties. This suggests that impartiality is interpreted differently by different programme makers across broadcast formats.
Non-party political guests
Appearing before the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee in September 2025, then Director General of the BBC, Tim Davie, insisted there was an exact balance between left-wing and right-wing non-party political guests on Question Time.
Our analysis of Question Time throughout 2025 suggests there has been a broad ideological balance of non-party guests, but with slightly more right-wing than left-wing panel members. We found 38.5% of non-political guests (20) were right-leaning, 32.7% (17) had a neutral or unknown political alignment, and 28.8% (15) were left-leaning.
We also found that the journalists invited onto the programme were more likely to be right-wing than left-wing, while civic society guests were more likely to be left-leaning. 48.3% (14) of journalists were right-leaning or affiliated with right-leaning publications, 31.1% (9) had a neutral or unknown political alignment, and 20.7% (6) were left-leaning or affiliated with left-leaning publications. In contrast, 39.1% (9) of civic society guests were left-leaning, 34.8% (8) had a neutral or unknown political alignment, and 26.1% (6) were right-leaning. This is likely a reflection of the commercial media landscape in the UK, where most major publications are right-wing. This may have led Question Time editors to cast their net more widely to find left-wing guests, such as trade unionists and popular activist economists known for advocating for a wealth tax.
Non-party political guests with more extreme political views tended to pair together in episodes. For example, on the two occasions the Reform UK supporting right GB News host Matthew Goodwin appeared, he was counterbalanced with left-wing journalist and political activist George Monbiot (13th February 2025) and left-wing economist and former prospective Labour candidate Faiza Shaheen (30th October 2025). And when Matthew Goodwin appeared, he was not on the same panel as a Reform UK politician because he was effectively representing that political position.
The need for more transparent guest selection criteria
Overall, our findings show Question Time balanced Labour and the Conservatives as the government and the official opposition, while rotating appearances from the UK’s other major parties. This approach to impartiality allocates more airtime to the two major parties (Labour and the Conservatives) according to Parliamentary status, therefore prioritising the number of MPs they have and vote share at the most recent General Election. This is, of course, not an exact science or a one-to-one measure given the unrepresentative nature of the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system, which produced an outcome where the Liberal Democrats won 12.2% of the vote and returned 75 MPs, while Reform UK won 14.3% of the vote and returned 5 MPs. It would appear factors such as the latest opinion polls or more subjective measures such as newsworthiness were given less weight since Reform UK appeared in fewer episodes than the three other parties, including the Liberal Democrats, despite leading the opinion polls. This is consistent with the approach they have taken since 2014 and has not changed despite an evolving political context where voting for parties other than Labour and the Conservatives reached a record high of 42.6% in the 2024 General Election and YouGov opinion poll data from 15th December 2025 showed combined support for Labour and the Conservatives at just 35%.
Another long-term trend that has continued is the greater prominence of right-wing non-party political guests compared to left-wing panellists. This difference is not substantial enough to warrant accusations of right-wing bias, but it raises further questions about the lack of transparency over the criteria Question Time uses to select guests and the protocols they follow to ensure balance.
As Question Time returns for 2026, it will be interesting to see if these trends continue or if producers revise their approach to guest selection.