BBC Question Time panel leaves the Greens out while Labour bleeds councillors to them days before Gorton & Denton votes. Right, so Fiona Bruce is hosting Question Time tonight and the BBC has already published the panel list, which means the thing doing the damage is not a clip, not a quote, not a bad moment on air, it’s a decision that exists before the cameras even roll, because it names four people and only four people: Heidi Alexander for Labour, Richard Holden for the Conservatives, Robert Jenrick for Reform, and Jon Sopel as the journalist, and the Greens are not in the room. That list sits there in public before a single audience question, and that’s the whole point, because when a programme that often squeezes in five guests decides it’s only doing four tonight, it isn’t “one of those things”, it’s a hard exclusion choice, it’s a choice about who gets treated as automatic politics and who gets treated as optional, and they’ve made that choice in the same week a Green candidate is actually on a real ballot in a live parliamentary by-election. Tom Stannard, acting as Returning Officer for Manchester, has already signed and published the legal notice that fixes the Gorton and Denton by-election for Thursday 26 February 2026, and that notice is the hard object the whole week is built around because it lists the candidates by name, including Hannah Spencer for the Greens, Labour’s Angeliki Stogia, and Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin, so the Greens aren’t some outside commentator asking for airtime, they are literally on the ballot in a parliamentary contest happening in days. Robert Jenrick being put on that Question Time sofa tonight then becomes a broadcast decision with teeth, because the BBC is choosing who gets treated as automatic national politics in the same news cycle that by-election is live, and with Jenrick booked Reform gets the default stamp of “serious” while the Greens get treated as the party you can leave off the stage even when the Returning Officer’s own notice says they are in the same race.