An audience member on BBC’s Question Time last night made a cheeky dig at politicians during a debate

Labour was left embarrassed in the latest episode of Question Time (Image: BBC)

During a spirited debate on BBC’s Question Time last night, an audience member’s witty six-word jab at public services triggered laughter and heated discussion. One gentleman in the London crowd challenged how the public could anticipate better public services without accepting higher taxes. He observed that many citizens desire the former whilst rejecting the latter, which he argued simply isn’t feasible.

Wrapping up his observation with a cheeky remark, he enquired: “Are we all bad at maths?”

This sardonic question prompted knowing chuckles from the London audience and ignited an animated exchange amongst the panel members, including Labour MP Alex Davies-Jones, Conservative peer Ken Clarke, and Danny Kruger, a recent defector from the Tories to Reform, reports the Manchester Evening News.

Zarah Sultana, co-founder of Your Party with Jeremy Corbyn earlier this year, challenged Mr Kruger during the discussion, advocating for higher taxes and greater financial contributions from society’s wealthier members.

The gentleman who originally raised the question – and cracked the joke about our mathematical capabilities – subsequently responded to the politicians’ remarks.

A man asked ‘are we all bad at maths’ on Question Time in a brutal swipe at Labour (Image: BBC)

He said: “There are different levers you can do with tax… I think Rachel Reeves is doing it a year too late, in terms of thinking about income tax (the Chancellor of the Exchequer is expected to increase this).

“There are other things you can do in terms of maybe reducing some taxes to increase some spending. I think it was the Lib Dems who said today or yesterday they would cut VAT in pubs and restaurants by 5%. That would all get us out celebrating for Christmas, and that would raise more tax because would be going out spending. So I think there are different levers you can do on tax.”

An audience member suggested that wealthier individuals might leave the UK if they were hit with the most severe tax increases.

However, Ms Sultana, MP for Coventry South, countered: “They won’t leave. This is scaremongering often done around the idea of taxing the super rich. Around 20,000 people in the country have assets over £10million, and they are not just going to leave their assets and move to another country.

“Their kids are in the private schools here, their culture and their lifestyle is very much in this country and I think it is scaremongering to try to justify nurses and teachers in Coventry South paying more taxes than the billionaires, than Amazon and Facebook, who get to negotiate their taxation deals with the government. I think that is criminally unfair. I don’t think we should be taxing work, we should be taxing wealth more.”

But Mr Kruger, representing East Wiltshire, argued that the Your Party politician’s stance was “wrong” during the heated debate on BBC One.

He stated: “It is really wrong to say high taxation doesn’t drive away the wealthy. It really does. Around 17,000 high net worth individuals left this country last year.” He also maintained that more and more young people are departing from the UK because “they don’t see it as the country for them”.