PEOPLE have reacted with fury on social media as journalist Rod Liddle is set to appear on Question Time this evening.

Liddle is a columnist for The Sunday Times and The Sun and is also associate editor of The Spectator.

He will also be standing as a Social Democratic Party candidate at the next General Election.

Tonight’s show will be broadcast from Middlesbrough, with Liddle set to stand as the candidate for Middlesbrough South & Cleveland East.

The National:

We previously told how Liddle came under fire for promoting anti-Scots “hate speech” when he wrote a piece on how he discovered his Scottish ancestry.

It was published under the headline, “Help me, I’m Scottish” with Liddle writing: “The only consolation is that henceforth I shall expect everybody else in England to subsidise me through their taxes, while simultaneously demanding total independence from them.”

READ MORE: Former Tory MSP defends Scottish Hate Crime Act from 'propagandists'

Liddle also previously attracted criticism when he suggested the 2019 General Election be held on a Muslim holy day to deter them from voting.

“My own choice of election date would be a day when universities are closed and Muslims are forbidden to do anything on pain of hell, or something.”

He also called a Labour MP who spoke out about breaking free of an abusive relationship as "the sobbing and oppressed Rosie '#MeToo' Duffield".

Many took to Twitter to criticise Question Time for having Liddle as a guest on tonight’s programme.

It comes the week after the programme attracted criticism for having right-wing columnist Melanie Phillips on the show.

Writing on Twitter/X Jonathan Portes, an economics professor with King’s College London said: “Not content with Melanie Phillips, @bbcquestiontime thinks that self-confessed racist liar Rod Liddle is an appropriate guest.”

Another user said: “Someone wanna tell the BBC that this isn’t how you create ‘balance’. You don’t offset reasonable people, with those who have extreme, often hateful views, and whose goal is purely to agitate and stir.”

Adam Bienkov of the Byline Times meanwhile commented: "Nothing shows quite how unseriously Islamophobia is still taken in the British media than Rod Liddle still being regularly invited on to the BBC."

On its website, the BBC says it picks Question Time guests "with a broad range of views, knowledge and experience, with panellists who are relevant to the big stories or debates of that week".