‘Not true!’ BBC QT audience member clashes with panellist over corruption in politics

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Speaking before audience members in Beckenham, Jordan Peterson, 59, explained how extremely successful individuals are dissuaded from entering politics because of what they have to give up. The discussion comes after the former Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson, 65, resigned as the MP for North Shropshire following a lobbying scandal.

Since then MPs have voted for the Prime Minister’s amendment to clamp down on second jobs. Boris Johnson, 57, has also appeared to acknowledge he had handled the debacle poorly. During his appearance before the Tories’ 1922 Committee, Mr Johnson conceded: “On a clear road I crashed a car into a ditch.” But Mr Peterson, who hails from Canada, said: “I know a lot of people who have had staggeringly successful careers and they are often loathed to go into the political field despite the tremendous expertise they’ve developed because they have to put everything they have already accomplished on hold or in hawk, in a sense, to enter the public sphere.” The clinical psychologist added: “I understand the conflict of interest problem but one of the problems with that is that most highly competent people in many fields are dissuaded from a political career because it requires the unproductive sacrifice of everything they’ve built and so what that does, in some sense, is deprive us of some of the best people who could be considering politics as a mode of public service and so that is a complicated problem to try and solve.” But one audience member did not seem to agree with Mr Peterson’s analysis. JUST IN: BBC Question Time: Viewers applaud Nazir Afzal's joke MPs should drive HGV as second job

She asked: “Why do we assume that such people are the ‘best people’?” The audience member then claimed: “They are obviously not the best people for the job!” The pair then locked horns over the issue with the author of ‘12 Rules for Life’ replying: “Because they have demonstrated extreme competence in at least one area of their career.” The audience member was having none of it, she instead replied: “That’s banking, this is why we are in the situation we are with people like politicians we have at the moment that are corrupt.” After some lengthy psychological analysis, Mr Peterson said only three percent of the population are psychopathic and suggested the number remains like this as going down such a route “is not a very good strategy”. But, and with laughs from her fellow audience members, she replied: “So why is that three percent elevated as our leaders?” READ MORE: ‘What about Ian Blackford?!’ SNP and Tory MSP fight on sleaze debate

Mr Peterson, who by this point had been engaged in the clash for 80-seconds, exclaimed: “They’re not, they aren’t, that’s wrong and to think that way is counterproductively cynical.” He added: “To blindly assume that that is more characteristic let’s say of your political leaders than it is of you, for example, as a person, or that it is more specifically characteristic of political leaders than people who are operating at the highest level of capacity in other areas, it’s an empty sort of cynicism, it doesn’t serve people well and it’s not true of reasonable Governments or countries.” But not all viewers seemed happy with Mr Peterson’s appearance. LBC host, Iain Dale, 59, tweeted: “Lots of people think Jordan Peterson is a man with interesting things to say. He's not living up to that reputation on Question Time. Very odd.” One viewer, Andrew Parnall, posted on social media: “Jordan Peterson on #bbcqt spoke at length whilst saying absolutely nothing I could understand. He was a complete waste of a panellist's chair.” DON'T MISS:

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