This week's panel

Question Time, the BBC's premier political debate programme chaired by David Dimbleby, was in Oxford on 25 October.

David Dimbleby was joined by the former Lord Chancellor Charles Falconer, the Conservative shadow minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude, the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow George Galloway, the political editor of The Spectator Fraser Nelson and the historian Maria Misra.

LORD FALCONER

Career: Charles Falconer was the first Secretary of State for Justice, having previously served as Lord Chancellor from June 2003 to May 2007.

A close friend of Tony Blair, and his flatmate in the early days of their legal careers, Lord Falconer left the cabinet when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister.

Last month he made headlines with an interview in which he appeared to criticise Gordon Brown's premiership.

He said: "If we rely on experience and our ability to handle crises and do not set out, in the coming months, our vision for the future of the UK, a vision which represents the progressive view of politics, then we will be offering drift not leadership, and the past not the future."

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FRANCIS MAUDE MP

Career: Francis Maude is the Conservative shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, and was the Conservative Party chairman from 2005 to 2007.

He has previously been shadow chancellor of the exchequer and shadow foreign secretary, and was a foreign office minister in the last Conservative government.

At the Conservative Party conference last month he said that the party were ready to fight, and win, an election, telling party members: "This programme for government is real. It's real and it's realistic. It has to be."

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GEORGE GALLOWAY MP

Career: George Galloway is the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow.

Having joined the Labour Party as a young activist, he was elected to parliament as the Labour MP for Glasgow Hillhead in 1987.

His increasingly outspoken criticism of the party's leadership, which he dismissed as "Tony Blair's lie machine" led to his expulsion from the party in October 2003.

In January 2004, he co-founded Respect, a coalition of left-wing organisations opposed to the Iraq war, and defeated Labour MP Oona King to become MP for Bethnal Green and Bow at the 2005 general election.

In May 2005, he appeared before a US senate hearing into the Oil For Food programme, saying: "I have no expectation of justice from a group of Christian fundamentalist and Zionist activists under the chairmanship of a neo-con George Bush".

He raised eyebrows with a controversial appearance on Celebrity Big Brother in January 2006. He is currently undergoing an 18-day suspension from the House of Commons.

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FRASER NELSON

Career: Fraser Nelson is the political editor of The Spectator, and a columnist for the News of the World. He was previously political editor of The Scotsman and The Business magazine.

Last week he urged David Cameron to capitalise on "a shift in public mood" writing:

"Deliciously, we can see the first glimpse of a new Labour split... Yet Mr Brown has already shown the Tories the dangers of underestimating him. He may have damaged his reputation as a Big Clunking Fist, but he has an enviable record as a long-term political survivor. He lost the game of chicken. His mission will now be to draw Mr Cameron into a game of stamina, and see if the Tories can last the pace."

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Dr Maria Misra

Career: Maria Misra is a historian and lecturer in modern history at Oxford University.

She specialises in imperialism and post-colonial history, and recently wrote and presented the Channel 4 series An Indian Affair.

She is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4, and has written for the New Statesman and the Guardian.