[Transmission]

Newsnight still on air at 23:07!

It's still Newsnight, then! I remember in the dim and distant past them getting yelled at to come off air following a breaking story earlier in the evening (I'm sure this time they had permission, though!).

[House]

Of course news programmes often have their plans ripped up at the last minute - that’s the business they’re in - but they don’t then get the guests who were booked for another story to talk at length about something else.

My point is if they could have got other guests at such short notice, there’s no reason they wouldn’t have done last night. Nothing about the format required them to use their booked panel, it was just the best option they had available to them.

The night before Victoria Derbyshire interviewed a (not-selected) Labour candidate in the studio as part of a breaking story, and interviewed a former Trump aide/spin doctor DTL. It’s not as though this format is wedded to a panel like Question Time is, on a night like last night it will come down to who/what they can get.