STEPHEN Flynn was interrupted multiple times by almost all the other members of the panel as he tried to speak on the economy on last night's BBC Question Time.
The SNP Westminster leader was responding to a point made earlier in the debate by Scottish Labour group leader Anas Sarwar on the politics running up to the next General Election when he was interrupted by multiple panellists and host Fiona Bruce.
Flynn started his speech about what he believes the Scottish people want to see prioritised and supported by their elective representatives at the next election. But he didn’t even get 30 seconds to make his point before broadcaster Iain Dale interrupted him.
Flynn was in the middle of saying: “The public's priorities matter. They are the economy, they want to see the public being on the receipt of investment in their public services, in their NHS, rejecting the austerity agenda that has came out of Westminster for the last 14 years.
“They want to see investment in Net Zero they want to see alignment with the single market, they want to see immigration ..."
But then Dale interjected by saying: “Why has there been less spent on the Scottish NHS this year than there was last year”
The two then went back and forth accusing each other of not telling the truth as Flynn argued that Scotland’s NHS was receiving record funding while Dale said his statement was simply untrue.
Stephen Flynn has to fight through repeated interruptions from the other panelists when he explains how the NHS in Scotland is do better than the NHS in England #BBCQT Why are they all so threatened by @StephenFlynnSNP pic.twitter.com/BtRidOJulT
— Farrukh (@implausibleblog) May 16, 2024
It wasn’t long after Dale’s interruption that Scottish Tory Meghan Gallacher also tried to cut off Flynn, who was in the middle of trying to answer the first interruption about the Scottish Government's investment into the NHS.
Flynn was saying: "Our nurses are paid more than anywhere else in these isles and there is junior doctor strikes happening right now in England.”
To which Gallacher interjected: “They also pay more in taxes."
Then host Bruce joined in immediately after Gallacher, asking why the waiting lists were so bad in Scotland.
By the end of his answer, both Dale and Bruce were continuously trying to stop the SNP politician by interjecting with more questions about the NHS and saying his answer was “simply untrue”.
In just one minute and a half, Flynn was interrupted by the other panellists five times and couldn’t finish his answer.
Exasperated by Dale’s non-stop attempts to speak over him, Flynn asked the broadcast pundit to “hold on a minute” for him to finish his last sentence.
The exchange left viewers of the show wondering why host Bruce hadn't done more to allow Flynn to finish his answer before other panellists were allowed to challenge his points.
"Stephen Flynn has to fight through repeated interruptions from the other panelists when he explains how the NHS in Scotland is do better than the NHS in England," one social media user wrote. "Why are they all so threatened by @StephenFlynnSNP?"
