Introduction
Too many political interviews and debates miss the real questions. They aim for theatre, not scrutiny. So, what should we actually be asking politicians? This list has been developed as a result of a comment here by a person who calls themself RobertJ.
Who do you serve?
- Who are you really working for?
- Is it the wealthy, big business, or ordinary people? How can we tell?
- Whose interests shape your policies?
- If you take donations, how do we know they don't influence your decisions?
- Why should politicians be allowed to receive private donations at all?
- Given how little it would cost, shouldn't politics be state-funded to prove it's free from corruption?
Why do you think you have a right to govern?
- Was the election that put you in office genuinely fair?
- Did a majority in your constituency actually vote for you?
- If not, how are those who didn't vote for you represented?
- Why does a minority so often choose the MP for a constituency in the UK?
- Wouldn't proportional representation be a far better way of selecting those who govern us?
Is it right that you sit in a UK parliament?
- There's growing evidence that the UK is an outdated, imperial concept. A majority in Scotland now appear to want self-government. Many in Northern Ireland wish to unite with Ireland. Wales may not be far behind. In that case, what gives England the right to govern countries that increasingly do not want to be in a union with it? Why are you clinging to the remnants of Empire?
What is your goal in government?
- Every government has a choice: to manage the economy or to manage the country. Which is your priority?
- If it's the economy, why do you obsess over balancing the government's books?
- Why talk about “taxpayers' money” when you must know that all government spending is funded by money created by the Bank of England on the government's behalf?
- Why do government deficits matter if the economy is at full employment?
- Why worry about the cost of government borrowing when quantitative easing and tightening have both proved there's no direct link between borrowing and government spending?
What is your economic plan for us?
- Are you committed to protecting the well-being of ordinary people?
- Will you tackle inequality? If so, how?
- How will you grow people's real after-tax and housing incomes?
- Why do you want economic growth at all? Given that GDP growth rarely trickles down, how will you ensure real growth in household incomes?
How will you fund your promises?
- What matters more to you — people, or balanced budgets?
- We plainly need more government spending. Do you agree? If not, why not?
- Why does the government issue debt at all?
- Do you understand that when the government can create money via its central bank, government debt is largely an expensive savings scheme for the wealthy, big business and bankers?
- When the economy needs it, will you allow debt to rise through money creation, or will you cut services just to balance the books?
Who will you tax more?
- More spending needs more tax or borrowing to keep inflation under control. So, who will you tax more?
- Will you tax wealth fairly?
- Will you tax the wealthy enough to redistribute income and wealth in a way we've not seen for decades?
- Why is the tax rate on income from work higher than on investment income? How will you fix this?
- Will you properly fund HMRC to pursue tax cheats?
- Given that only around 60% of small companies pay what they owe, according to HMRC, what will you do about that?
What is the state for?
- Is the government just there to keep the market economy running?
- Or is it the government's job to care for people, to build resilience and well-being?
- How should the state deal with market failure?
- In particular, how should it address climate change, and why isn't this your top priority?
Will you challenge vested interests?
- Will you take on finance, landlords and monopolies, who, according to the Resolution Foundation, are ensuring that household disposable incomes in the UK will not rise this decade? How will you do that?
- How will you reduce big business influence over government?
- How important are the wealthy really to the UK economy? What do they contribute, versus what do they extract?
How will you measure success?
- If you say you want “growth”, what do you mean, and growth for whom?
- What other metrics matter to you, and how do you balance them?
- How will you show you care about poverty, well-being, the environment, soft power and security?
And finally
- These are the sorts of questions that reveal what politicians actually think.
- We deserve real answers.
- So, ask your politicians questions like these. Hold them to account.
- Any of these can be used as a basis for a letter to your MP. Use this linked ChatGPT prompt to help, if you want.
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Thank you for the detail on this matter.
What might be the similarities and differences between a private donation and a bribe?
Most particularly, scale. And accountability.
The spending cap for the last election was raised by 80%:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2023/1235/made
It will continue to get worse unless we do something about it.
Spotlight on Corruption have an excellent report on political funding with several good ideas:
https://www.spotlightcorruption.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Briefing-on-Electoral-Integrity-and-Regulation-2.pdf
If you haven’t read the paper by spotlightcorruption.org (Matthew T Hoare’s article at 8.28am) I recommend you read it in full, as it clearly demonstrates the undermining of essential controls in electoral financing which enable big business and foreign interests to exert control over the policies of the ‘Single Transferable Parties’. This was happening when the Tories were in government and has become even more blatant with the current Labour administration. The Bribery and Corruption Act of 2010 is the UK’s primary legislation in this area. It makes it illegal for UK nationals and individuals residing in the UK, as well as UK-incorporated companies and Scottish partnerships, to offer, promise, or give a bribe anywhere in the world. The Act also covers the request, agreement to receive, or acceptance of a bribe, as well as bribery of foreign public officials and failure of commercial organizations to prevent bribery by associated persons.
Why then is it OK for big business and foreign interests to offer bribes to UK Politicians provided the “gift” is recorded in the Westminster register? If that’s not transparent interference in political policies I don’t know what is. This, the FPTP voting system and the torpedoing of Leveson 2, along with growing voter disillusionment, have opened the way for the media and big business to exert undue influence over elections. It’s also a factor in the increasing push towards self-determination in the devolved Celtic nations, all of which use different proportional voting systems, but are compelled to abide by Westminster’s out-dated regulations and customs for UK elections and referenda like Brexit, where Scotland and N Ireland’s clear votes to remain in the EU counted for nothing once the English vote was counted. Membership of a political union which offers no right to seccede is not a union at all; it’s simply colonialism by another name.
Spotlight have done very good work for a long time.
That is a good briefing.
And your questions are spot on, Ken.
I hope you are getting better.
An impressive list! Hope I didn’t ruin your day.
Thank you.
Now the really big challenge – asking them and getting them asked, of the right people and in the right places.
Indeed
And no, you didn’t ruin my day
I did this, watched some of Glastonbury and some otyher things, all pretty much simultaneously, switching to keep energy levels for each of them high.
Nice work – but also, send them to the BBC, ITV etc., because quite frankly too many of their ‘reporters’ are not doing their jobs properly at all.
All good questions. 🙂 🙂
The question I would like asked, to any politician, but especially to the Prime Minister and Chancellor, preferably in PM’s questions, is “what is the government’s estimate of the fiscal multiplier for expenditure on the NHS”?.
Yes, this is a “geeky” question. But it is one that any politician should be very familiar with. Sadly I suspect that many have no idea what a fiscal multiplier is (see https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/05/29/ending-the-two-child-benefit-will-pay-for-itself/), but they should.
Whatever they answer should lead to a discussion about why the government is not spending to improve public services when in many cases, particularly at the moment, much of this expenditure would lead to more growth than the expenditure.
I thought about such things and decided they would never get answered….
Parliament is a hopeless place to ask questions. PMQs and routine departmental Qs are especially useless.
Occasionally Urgent Parliamentary Questions on headline events which are then followed by questions, can be difficult for the government as illustrated by Hugh Falconer (Junior Min FCO) in recent UQ sessions on Gaza, when his repeated official mantra excusing clear government failure and complicity, began to look ridiculous and even HE was fed up saying it – because almost every MP asked the same thing and got the same ridiculous answer. But PMQs doesn’t work that way. I’ve been listening to parliament since I was 17, and I’ve never seen it this bad.
Occasionally Westminster Hall debates contain intelligent discussion but no one listens and the votes are meaningless.
Select committees can be entertaining events but their reports get ignored and some can be very performative, with chairs and members thinking more about getting a gov’t job than speaking truth to power (it worked for Darren Jones, and it might yet work for Yvette (lock ’em up and stop the boats) Cooper).
Either that or chairs get carried away “grandstanding” in the hope of a brief clip on the TV news bulletin.
MSM Journalism is feeble, broadcasting is either propaganda or ketamine for the masses.
Its up to us, I’m afraid.
.
So, how will you use these Robert?
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/06/30/the-questions-we-should-be-asking-our-politicians/comment-page-1/#comment-1028314
Good question.
I live a quiet life for a variety of reasons. I’m a well-informed nobody nowadays.
My focus is individuals and relationships and no longer on institutions.
My main area of opportunity is with individuals, either friends, family, or via local community organisations.
My personal opportunity to influence government? Nil.
BBC? Nil
Guardian and other press? Nil
(That’s not for lack of trying btw)
But local communities and individuals where I have plied my trade before retirement? Quite considerable, I know I have made a difference, in terms of real community change in concert with others, and I think I’ve made it harder for bad people to hoodwink others.
Ive only been in this community for 7 years and its only now I’m beginning to see opportunities to influence opinion.
I have my eye on one Labour linked organisation open to non-Labour members, and I may try asking questions online there. But I expect I may well get booted out quite quickly if I ask anything awkward as it has several Labour Cabinet members in it.
Keep going Robert….
There is another major issue that politicians need to face.
Educating the public in realities.
Modern politicians push dogma and respond to focus groups. They never educate the public. The mainstream media no longer do so. As a result, we are building an ignorant society.
If you’ll allow me, may I suggest an additional point:-
What are your policies on managing the impacts of artificial intelligence, both in terms of the opportunities it offers and the risks it poses to employment, income security, privacy, democracy, and human dignity?
AI has the potential to transform productivity, science, healthcare, education, and public administration, yet it also threatens to displace jobs, concentrate power in the hands of tech monopolies, and erode privacy and trust in democratic processes. What steps will you take to ensure that the benefits of AI are widely shared, that those displaced by automation are supported with meaningful alternatives, and that AI systems are governed ethically, transparently, and in the public interest?
Good ones, for the second edition
Thanks to RobertJ and to you Richard for these lovely powerful questions! I’d love to send them all to our MP, but that would overwhelm him, so perhaps I’ll send him one question per week?!
That’s my plan…
Three cheers for these questions. It’s hard to imagine any politician giving honest answers to any of them, let alone all. So we have to work out the answers by observing behaviour. And if we do that, almost all the answers are what we would prefer not to see.
Maybe this leads to a Magna Carta for our time.
There are only 3 clauses of the Magna Carta still in use, one about the City of London, one about the church and one about us being tried by a jury of equals, and they are trying to get rid of the last one.
Although you could say it took a few centuries to get to that stage.
I worked for MPs and MEPs for over forty years.
If you approached any politician I worked for and started down the line of questioning set out, the interview would be rightly, rapidly curtailed.
They are busy; these questions are unnecessarily hostile.
While it is right that politicians with political and/ or economic responsibilities – such as ministers or Council cabinet members – should be held to account, as they are through parliamentary/council questions, answering debates, appearances before parliamentary/ council committees and in interactions with the media, back bench MPs/ MSPs, MSs/MLAs/councillors have a different role.
There is a menace behind the list of questions that appears to challenge the integrity and honesty of the politician being addressed. The assumption is actually quite offensive for MPs working hard to serve their constituents, to scrutinise legislation, to debate policy and sometimes to initiate legislation. It is a bloody difficult job, for which, from experience MPs get little thanks and oodles of flack, especially from trolls and keyboard warriors.
By all means try to establish what the world view of your elected representatives might be, and why they might hold particular policy positions: but enquire in a collegiate not an implied accusatory way, as these questions are framed.
Start again, ChatGTP!
I didn’t use ChatGPT
So, what would you suggest?
These were, by the way, my toned down versions
And can’t a politician withstand a little tough questioning?
I tried to put myself in the place of the ( mostly leftist and progressives) politicians with whom I have worked and considered how they would react. Only one held office, and he was a Labour shadow cabinet member ( the late Michael Meacher). If domestic approached these extremely busy campaigning MPs with a series of implied hostile questions implying they lacked integrity, they would pretty quickly decide their valuable political time would be better spent doing someting politically constructive, like helping one of many constituents or challenging a minister with a letter, orchestrating a critical speech, or preparing for a select committee or for a campaigning press conference. Sitting around being challenged by interlocutors who just want to criticise is politically unproductive.
You may be able to justify grilling ministers or council leaders on the bases of their policies or political beliefs; but for backbenchers, who do not hold portfolio responsibilities, such probing questions are not really useful.
Better to try to find out how the MP can use his/her access to ministers/officials/the incredible Parliamentary library to solve your pressing political problem, whatever it is.
MPs I worked with met progressive lobbyists( but not commercial ones)!very many times to work out collegiate co-operation.
I knew Michael
I seem to recall discussing issues like this, but then I was writing Bills for him at the time…
A good expansion on Tony Benn’s “five questions about power”, the first four of which were
What Power Have You Got?
Where Did You Get It From?
In Whose Interests Do You Exercise It?
To Whom Are You Accountable?
But it’s missing something that asks or expands on the important fifth one.
How Can We Get Rid Of You?
Agreed
I would have agreed with you 10 or 20 years ago. But not any longer. Labour’s 2024 entrants to parliament knew exactly what a toxic ruthless dishonest authoritarian party they were standing for. I’m assuming of course that a Labour PPC would know at least as much, and preferably a lot MORE than me, about the Labour party and its constantly changing policies, and might have a passing interest in its principles before putting themselves forward as a candidate and especially before accepting a gov’t job.
I used to campaign for my MP – but she’s a minister now and I have lost all respect for her.
As for the hostile questions, it USED to be the case that journalists asked the hard hostile questions. Now they don’t. So our leaders never have to deal with them.
My neighbours work even harder than their MP. Mostly just to try and stay alive. No one is listening to them. That’s why Farage is doing so well. Not because my neighbours are racist bigots but because Labour ignores them and does what Labour’s masters want.
I am lost Robert
Who is that addressed to?
I think we are agreeing…
DavidJLowry.
Sorry forgot to include that.
RobertJ at 2.25 understandably has somewhat jaundiced view of the utility of putting oral questions to ministers at PMQs or departmental oral question time sessions. Frustratingly ministers either routinely evade answering the question posed or use the opportunity to egregious attack the questioner. It is almost totally a frustrating waste of time.
But MPs can also submit written questions that require ministers to provide factual responses, and do not lend themselves to dismissive rhetorical flourishes.
In the time I worked in Westminster with different MPs from several parties (except the Tories) and two independents I must have drafted close to 20,000 written parliamentary questions, the answers to which the MPs typically tried to use in political campaigns and recycled them into speeches in Parliament to put the responding ministers on the spot.
MPs can be your ally. Even if you don’t share their politics, they represent all constituents, and are duty bound to try to help constituents of all political persuasions.
So write to them, making clear in the first line you are a constituent ( maybe simply add your postcode to the opening sentence.). Then set out briefly your issue, and clearly state what outcome you wish to achieve.
I always recommend you ask your MP to forward the query directly to the responsible minister with a cover note asking for a ministerial response.
MPs’ correspondence has priority in a minister’s in tray.
This gives you priority attention over other correspondents.
@DrDavidLowry
Thank you for that – I am not as much of a novice at this parliament business as perhaps you may be assuming. I am familiar with the business of politely and carefully writing to MPs, I’ve been doing it for a LONG time – since the mid to late 1970s, or possibly earlier (mostly Tory MPs, Michael Hamilton, Robert Key, an LD MP Annette Brooke, a Tory MP Michael Tomlinson and finally a Labour MP – I’ve moved a lot),
I am thoroughly familiar with the business of passing on comments to ministers, and have written both in my capacity as an individual, as a digital privacy campaigner, and in a representative capacity from when I was running a local foodbank. I found that latter task a very time-consuming way of being told again and again that “work was the best route out of poverty” while things got worse and worse and worse and my data showed an increasing number of people in work coming through our doors. That sort of thing has a radicalising effect on one.
More than a decade ago as a very active digital privacy campaigner I lobbied my LD MP and got a meeting in Westminster with a LD peer (now dead) who was interested in our campaign – which took on the might of BT and their now defunct partners, Phorm, and eventually became international – we also lobbied the EU commission successfully (using our then EU citizen privacy rights) and got rulings from the Commission against the UK government. It involved attending at least two meetings in Portcullis House involving an All-Party Parliamentary group, attending a select committee hearing, and several meetings with representatives of the ICO, as well as ICO conferences.
I spent a further 5 years more recently 2012-17, engaging with my LD and then after 2015 my Tory MP (who later became a whip then solicitor-general, getting booted out in 2024). I never used green ink, and I referenced everything I said, and was unfailingly polite, but I would say every letter since about May 2015 was a complete waste of time. The government were and still are immune to logic, to data, to moral force and to genuine public opinion.
The subjects I raised with my Tory MP were
Refugees
(I was involved in a successful inter-faith scheme to house SVP refugees – we bought a house, and housed a Syrian family for 5 years while they got settled into the UK)
and food poverty
(I had helped set up and then became manager of an independent foodbank which is still running, and did a lot of research and data collection to counter the constant stream of Misinformation from DWP. the foodbank is still running and serving an every growing clientele of desperate people in a wealthy market town.)
I met him several times personally and when watching him on Parliament Live, noticed how he gradually lost interest in the facts around food poverty and although still a back bencher was clearly aiming at climbing the parliamentary ladder rather than listening to the truth. and he had reached the dizzy heights of Solicitor-General in Sept 2022 when I had moved to my retirement home here in Bristol.
I also used to run (sizeable) Churches Together hustings for at least two general elections, in my market town, which took a fair bit of political savvy. I am not uninformed about these matters.
I’m not disputing your experience inside the system in years gone by, but for a mere constituent, in today’s parliament, all I can say is, it ain’t like that now, not at our end. things have changed, for the worse. Your mileage may vary.
My frustration is not due to my lack of understanding of the process of democratic accountability via elected representatives – I’ve written well crafted, carefully researched letters to MPs for about 50 years, but over the last 10 or so years I have found that to be increasingly, wasted effort as the quality of elected politicians, and their interest in being accountable or talking sense, has declined dramatically. Politics aside, the current government seems to be the worst in my lifetime, at understanding what they are in parliament FOR, and believe me, I wrote to my Tory MP quite often during the Thatcher years. He was known as the Minister for Traffic Cones at the time but even he was better than the current crop.
My current MP IS a Labour minister in DHSC.
I follow their activity on TheyWorkForYou, and therefore see both their oral and written answers and am familiar with how those work too. At the moment quite a few of the recent written answers seem to consist of apologies for not meeting the timescale for replies or wonderfully evasive statements about the governments commitments and priorities but without an adequate response to the level of crisis that we face in their department.
Sorry for the long post. But I wouldn’t want you to think that I was simply airing my opinions without the benefit of experience and a record of achievement.
I think we are going to have to differ – and recognise that our perspectives, our locations and the eras we are referring to, may be quite different. Hence our different opinions.
Noted, and thanks.
I may do a post…
If writing a question to your MP, you have to put your full name and address, including postcode. My MP has decided he will not respond unless I put a phone number now.
@DrDavidLowry. I agree with you. Mostly! PMQs and Departmental Qs are a waste of time and tax payers’ money. Personally, I’ve found that trawling through the Ministerial answers to written questions by Department (or by Minister) has been the most productive source of information. In this current Battle of the Benefits, I’ve also had quite a bit of success submitting FOI requests. The DWP has received hundreds of FOI requests from us cripples and campaigners; scandalously, it has been FOIs which have forced the Government into revealing the true extent of the damage which will be caused.
However, as far as the proposed questions are concerned, I think the fundamental question underlying everything is actually:
“What do you believe the Government of a country is actually FOR?”
A “”country” is simply a piece of land within a defined border. In that country lives a collection of n million people, occupying that specific space either because they are born there or because they’ve chosen to move there. The adult people have the right to vote for a small group to lead them, and the unspoken contract, established over centuries, is that the group of leaders with the most votes will look after them and ensure they have at least their basic needs met.
This is patently obviously not happening in the UK, and has not happened for decades. As one example, nearly 5 million children are in poverty, and this Government intends to pass a law adding another 50,000. So, bearing that in mind – along with the myriad other examples – my next question would be:
“Do you believe that every person in this country has equal value?”
“How will you personally strive to ensure that every person has a reasonable quality of life?”
Their primary aim should always be to do the least amount of harm to the greatest number of people.
‘Why should I vote for you at the next election? And the one after that?’
Late as usual, being in the antipodes, and unqualified, but I wonder if a more Socratic approach’d work? Instead of direct questions, a pithy lead-in about what you actually want/know would be better, then a question, why aren’t we doing this/what is your argument against this…
Sure, but are the topics wrong?
Spot on.
[…] I think that writing letters to MPs remains an important thing to do, I prepared the list of questions that I think we might want to raise with MPs, which was published here yesterday. Some suggested […]