Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades.

Several of the programme's editors over the years have gone on to senior positions within the BBC and elsewhere. Paxman's fellow presenters are Gavin Esler,Kirsty Wark and Emily Maitlis.Newsnight has been broadcast on BBC Two since 1980. It goes out on weekday evenings between 10:30pm and 11:20pm. Occasionally it may have an extended edition if there is an especially eventful event in the news - as happened on July 7 2011, when closure of the News of the World led to an extended version which went on until 11:35 pm. Recordings are available within the UK via the BBC website. A weekly 26-minute digest edition of Newsnight is screened on the corporation's international channel, BBC World News.

Newsnight in its current format began on 30 January 1980, although a shorter news bulletin of the same name had run in its late-night BBC2 slot during the 1970s. Its launch was delayed for four months by the Association of Broadcasting Staff, at the time the main BBC trade union.Newsnight was the first programme to be made by means of a direct collaboration between BBC News, then at Television Centre, and the current affairs department, based some distance away at the Lime Grove Studios. Staff feared job cuts.

Nigel Paul Farage ( /ˈfærɑːʒ/, FARR-ahzh; born 3 April 1964, Farnborough, Kent), is a British politician and is the Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a position he also held from September 2006 to November 2009. He is a Member of the European Parliament for South East England and co-chairs the Eurosceptic Europe of Freedom and Democracy group.

Farage is a founding member of the UKIP, having left the Conservative Party in 1992 after they signed the Maastricht Treaty. Having unsuccessfully campaigned in European and Westminster parliamentary elections for UKIP since 1994, he gained a seat as an MEP for South East England in the 1999 European Parliament Election — the first year the regional list system was used — and was re-elected in 2004 and 2009. Farage describes himself as a libertarian and rejects the notion that he is a conservative.

In September 2006, Farage became the UKIP Leader and led the party through the 2009 European Parliament Election in which it received the second highest share of the popular vote, defeating Labour and the Liberal Democrats with over two million votes. However he stepped down in November 2009 to concentrate on contesting the Speaker John Bercow's seat of Buckingham in the 2010 general election.

George Galloway (born 16 August 1954) is a British politician, author, journalist, and broadcaster, and the Respect Member of Parliament (MP) for Bradford West. He was previously an MP for the Labour Party, for Glasgow Hillhead and then its successor constituency Glasgow Kelvin from 1987 until 2005. He was expelled from the Labour Party in October 2003 because of his strident public opposition to the Iraq War. He subsequently became a founding member of the left-wing Respect Party, and was elected as the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in 2005. In 2010, Galloway unsuccessfully contested the seat of Poplar and Limehouse, and in 2011 he unsuccessfully contested the Glasgow list for the Scottish Parliament, before being elected as an MP in the Bradford West by-election, 2012.

Galloway is well known for his campaigns in support of the Palestinians in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In the late-1980s Hansard records him delivering a ferocious assault on the Ba'ath regime, and Galloway opposed Saddam's regime until the United States-led Gulf War in 1991. Galloway is known for a visit to Iraq where he met Saddam Hussein, and delivered a speech, which ended in English with the statement "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability." He has always stated that he was addressing the Iraqi people in the speech. Galloway testified to the United States Senate in 2005 over alleged illicit payments from the United Nations' Oil for Food Programme.

Jim Sillars (Gaelic: Seumas Mac an Airgid; born 4 October 1937) is a Scottish politician. He is married to current member of the Scottish Parliament, Margo MacDonald.

Sillars was born in Ayrshire, Scotland. His early working life involved him following his father into working on the railways, then joining the Royal Navy, before becoming a fireman. It was as a fireman that he became more active politically, through the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) and later with the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC).

Sillars was elected at a by-election in 1970 as Member of Parliament (MP) for South Ayrshire constituency, representing the Labour Party. He became well known as an articulate, intellectual left-winger, strongly in favour of the establishment of a devolved Scottish Assembly.

In 1976 he led a breakaway Scottish Labour Party (SLP). The formation of the SLP was inspired primarily by the failure of the then Labour Government to secure a Scottish Assembly. Sillars threw himself into establishing the SLP as a political force, but ultimately it would collapse following the 1979 General Election. At that election the SLP had nominated a mere three candidates (including Sillars who was attempting to hold on to his South Ayrshire seat). However only Sillars came remotely close to winning and it was this failure to secure a meaningful share of the vote that prompted the decision to disband.

Paul Robin Krugman ( /ˈkruːɡmən/; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times. In 2008, Krugman won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences (informally the Nobel Prize in Economics) for his contributions to New Trade Theory and New Economic Geography. According to the Nobel Prize Committee, the prize was given for Krugman's work explaining the patterns of international trade and the geographic concentration of wealth, by examining the impact of economies of scale and of consumer preferences for diverse goods and services.

Krugman is known in academia for his work on international economics (including trade theory, economic geography, and international finance),liquidity traps and currency crises. He is the 17th most widely cited economist in the world today and is ranked among the most influential academic thinkers in the US.