Who is on the BBC Question Time panel tonight?

Priti Patel

Who? Conservative MP for Witham and former international development secretary

Where is she on Brexit? Fanatical Brexiteer flagged by some as the “poster girl” of the Vote Leave campaign

Back on the backbenches after a holiday to Israel where she kept unaccountably bumping into members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, nothing – not even 22,000 people gleefully tracking her flight back from Kenya to London to receive her P45 – seems to ruffle the shameless Patel. Switched effortlessly back to using her Commons pulpit to attack Brexit rebels (“they undermine Britain’s negotiating position, they harm our national interests and fail the British people”) and her own leadership: last month she complained Theresa May and Philip Hammond could not, as former Remain supporters, ‘bring themselves to say [Brexit] is a good idea’. A self-described “proud Thatcherite” who retains barely-concealed ambitions to lead her party, she has previously boasted she would have told Brussels to “sod off” over its divorce bill demands.

Lisa Nandy

Who? Labour MP for Wigan

Where is she on Brexit? Remain campaigner whose constituency’s 63.9% vote to leave has seen her make her peace with the decision

Former junior spokeswoman under Ed Miliband, Nandy served in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet until after the Brexit referendum when, in common with many of her colleagues, she concluded he was rubbish and quit. Very much the epitome of Labour’s “soft left”, she served as co-chair of Owen Smith’s campaign when he challenged Corbyn and has since spoken of the abuse she has received from Corbynistas, comparing it to the far right. A Remainer, she said last month “I don’t feel there is a strong appetite for a second referendum” and that “it feels to me that having had that debate and had the questions settled as far as most people are concerned, the result would be very much like the last one, if not more emphatic for Leave”. Spoken of as a potential future leader before Labour went mad.

Ian Blackford

Who? Leader of the SNP in the House of Commons

Where is he on Brexit? Strongly anti, along with the rest of his party

The SNP’s Westminster leader was kicked out of the Commons chamber by speaker John Bercow last month after refusing to sit down in prime minister’s questions. The row, which saw the entire SNP group walk out in solidarity, ostensibly centred on the government’s decision to take over powers being returned from Brussels next March which the Scottish Government says belong to Edinburgh. But some saw a bid to seize some limelight by Blackford, who has struggled to fill the considerable shoes of his predecessor Angus Robertson as the nationalists’ man in London since taking the job almost exactly a year previously. Yesterday dug out the SNP’s greatest hits album to tell the Commons that “our independence day is coming and it’s coming soon”. Solidly Remain, like his party and most of Scotland (in the EU, at least).

Matthew Parris

Who? Columnist for The Times and The Spectator

Where is he on Brexit? Fervent Remainer who has said that Brexit “is driving me slightly mad. And I do mean that clinically: not as a rhetorical flourish”

One of the most articulate columnists around, the former Conservative MP’s Saturday Times columns sometimes appear wet with tears such are his palpable despair at the state of his party and country. Refers to his Tory colleagues as “Brexit ultras”, describing them as “blinded by zealotry”. Wrote earlier this year: “They know… that the referendum placed voters in an impossible position. They know that, narrowly, the voters made a mistake. They can see this is becoming plain. They know — the majority that are not zealots — that our party is now acting against the interests of our country. And nobody has the spine to say so.” Effortlessly polite, Parris is not afraid to play the man rather than the ball, as his excoriating attack on Boris Johnson two years ago shows. Will probably land more blows on Patel than Nandy or Blackford.

Carolyn Radford

Who? CEO of Mansfield Town FC, obviously

Where is she on Brexit? Not known, although Mansfield itself voted to leave by 70.9%

CEO of the League Two club since 2011 when she was appointed by its owner, then boyfriend and now husband John Radford. Angered by those who suggested it was nepotism, she has said: “I’ve got a degree from Durham, one of the best universities in the country, and I’m a trained lawyer. If you look at other chief execs and their backgrounds I’m sure I’ve got one of the better CVs.” One of only a handful of women in executive positions in English football, her own politics are unknown, but her attempt to win a seat on the FA Council was widely pilloried for the music video she created to promote it (chorus: “It’s Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn for me”). An inveterate social selfie poster who exists on three hours sleep a night, she has all but got the long-suffering Stags back in the black, which is more than most politicians on the panel can say.

Question Time is on BBC One at 10.45pm tonight (11.40pm in Northern Ireland).

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