Sebastian Vettel, statesman. New career beckons for F1 champion — MPH

For the benefit of those readers not resident in the UK, Question Time is a current affairs TV programme in which members of the British public put questions of concern to a panel usually comprising two politicians from opposing parties, an economics expert and two figures from the entertainment world. Last night Sebastian Vettel appeared on it – and was quite brilliant.

Here is a guy brought up in Germany, living in Switzerland, racing cars as a profession who has knowledge of British current affairs and can talk on equal terms with professional politicians from this country. Actually, it wasn’t so much equal terms, it was as a voice pleading for bigger, better thinking, working together as opposed to squabbling. What’s more he did it with charm and humour.

His centre point is the global climate emergency, as that is the cause he has embraced. But he was using that to frame his answers in a way that transcended petty politics and what is a naturally combative programme format.

There’s a creeping insidious trait in TV and media debate to limit the frame in which a discussion can be had. So it appears superficially like a debate of ideas but is actually artificially constrained in where the boundaries are. Seb crashed through that in a brilliantly refreshing way.

“I am thinking, ‘Should we be travelling the world wasting resources?'”

When the subject of the question was energy prices, the politicians argued about whose fault it was, about how little the government was doing about easing the burden of those living near the breadline, the Attorney General responding with figures claiming otherwise – to general derision. Vettel framed it as yes, we’re in a big mess now with energy since the invasion of Ukraine, but the reason is that we never look at the big picture. We’ve gone along with a dependency we should have shook off a long, long time ago – and now something’s happened to make us notice. We shouldn’t be dependent upon fossil fuels, the transition away from them could and should have started eons ago.

He made the point about the concern for national economies versus the reality that in keeping those economies propped up we are financing a war. That’s where dependency has brought us. “In Germany it’s now clear that the decisions we made regarding dependency on Russian energy were wrong. It’s obvious. But it was obvious to the energy experts years ago but the politicians ignored the experts. You have experts, you can choose the good people to consult.”