POLITICALLY CORRECT
She’s the new darling of Westminster, but is Laura Kuenssberg’s rise to fame simply part of the BBC’s rabid obsession with promoting women?
‘I’ve never seen a more engaging political reporter’ ‘Conveys a sense of fascination... a delight to watch’
AT a party in London, days af t er t he 2 0 1 0 General Election, the BBC’s deputy political editor James Landale was looking distinctly uncomfortable. He had just been asked about his prospects of one day succeeding his boss Nick Robinson.
‘There isn’t a vacancy,’ said the Old Etonian rather too quickly. Then he added: ‘The deputy never gets the job.’
Perhaps he saw the way the wind was blowing even then. In the Parliamentary race which had just been run, one TV journalist had seemed almost as ubiquitous on screen as the three main party leaders. It was not Mr Landale.
Nor was it Mr Robinson who dominated the BBC’s coverage for unfeasibly lengthy periods in the run-up to the poll. It was Laura Kuenssberg, a fresh-faced Glaswegian with a blonde bob and infectious enthusiasm for her subject.
As election day neared, some viewers wondered i f she ever sl ept. Her own explanation for such Herculean endurance was adrenaline, egg sandwiches and Irn- Bru. Unwavering ambition could surely have been added to that list.
Five years on, Mr Landale’s prediction has proved prescient. The deputy is staying where he is while 38-year-old Miss Kuenssberg makes history as the BBC’s first female political editor.
‘Delighted, shocked and in awe of following the peerless @bbcnickrobinson!’ she tweeted to her 220,000 followers on Wednesday.
Nick Robinson’s reaction, meanwhile, was: ‘Delighted for @bbclaurak. She’ll be a brilliant Political Editor at a fascinating time.’
Mr Landale, who until early last month was the bookies’ favourite to replace Mr Robinson, has yet to record his reaction.
Whatever the bookies say, there was, perhaps, a certain inevitability about Miss Kuenssberg’s ascent to one of the most prestigious jobs in British broadcasting. Long before Mr Robin- son’s battle with l ung cancer prompted speculation that he was about to relinquish his title, it was she who was most often talked about as his natural successor.
A born communicator with or without an autocue, she combined erudition with an airy, unpretentious style which endeared her to viewers. Ever since that 2010 election she has been at the vanguard of uber-talented young women broadcast journalists rising through the television newsroom ranks.
As Angela Rippon, a news presenter from a very different age, commented in 2011: ‘Now, in every aspect of television, there are young women who are absolutely justifying their career positions against their male colleagues.
‘Some of them are actually a lot better than the men – somebody should make Laura Kuenssberg [ the BBC’s] political editor because she is outstanding.’
While clearly an exceptional candidate for the job on her own merits, Miss Kuenssberg’s gender was another factor in her favour. It was an open secret at the corporation that bosses were keen to appoint a woman to the top political role, whose previous incumbents include Andrew Marr, Robin Oakley, John Cole and John Simpson.
But what put her ahead of other female contenders for the role – thought to include names such as Allegra Stratton, political editor of Newsnight, Lucy Manning, BBC News’ special correspondent and Channel 4 News presenter Cathy Newman?
It may not be entirely insignificant that Miss Kuenssberg has more Twitter followers than all three of those women put together. Indeed, there was a time when even Mr Robinson lagged behind her.
If nothing else, it placed her as the female candidate with the highest profile. But there is solid evidence, too, that she engages viewers.
‘Laura Kuenssberg is such a breath of fresh air,’ wrote one fan on the site. ‘She just does the job in an unpretentious manner and actually communicates the key information.’
Another wrote: ‘Nice to see somebody so young who actually appears to know a lot about her chosen subject. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more engaging live political reporter. She conveys a sense of fun and fascination in what she does and constantly comes up with apposite questions… I find her a delight to watch.’
But how did a Partick Thistle fan from the West End of Glasgow travel so far, so fast, i n an i ndustry as competitive as television journalism?
Coming from a high-achieving family must have helped.
She is the daughter of Professor Nick Kuenssberg OBE, an eminent Scottish businessman who made his fortune in textiles and has held many positions, paid and unpaid, across many of Scotland’s most influential businesses and institutions.
A clue to his political sympathies emerged in 2008 when, embroiled in a secret donor scandal, then Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander named him among those who had contributed to her leadership campaign.
He, his wife, young son and daughter were living in Italy where he was working for the clothing giant Coats Viyella when Laura was born in 1976. But they all returned to live in Glasgow in time for the youngest to start school.
Miss Kuenssberg’s mother Sally is known for her work with charities such as the Scottish Child Psychotherapy Trust. In 1999, she was made a CBE for services to child welfare and justice t hrough c hairi ng t he Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration.
Her maternal grandfather, meanwhile, was High Court judge Lord Robertson, who played a significant role in shaping Scots Law.
Little wonder hopes were high for the youngest of three siblings, when she embarked on her education at Laurel Bank, Glasgow’s most prestigious all-girls private school. Progressing to Edinburgh University, she studied history. But it was her third year, for which she transferred to Georgetown University in Washington DC to study journalism, which set the course of the career that followed.
Having already ‘dabbled’ in student radio, she now worked as an intern for an NBC political show and immersed herself in US politics at a time when President Clinton was up to his neck i n scandal over his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
She said later: ‘Studying abroad wasn’t something I had planned to do but now I consider my year in the US to be the greatest gift my Edinburgh education gave me.
‘ More than anything, it was the American system of internships that led me to work a couple of days a week on a TV current affairs programme. It wasn’t just great fun but confirmed for me that I wanted to work in broadcasting, and gave me the confidence to pursue a job in TV.’
Graduating from Edinburgh University with a first-class honours degree, she worked for a local radio station and in cable TV in Glasgow before joining BBC North East and Cumbria in 2000.
There she won a Royal Television Society award for her work in home affairs before leaving the corporation for a brief stint at Channel 4 News. By the time she returned to the BBC in 2003, it was already clear she was destined to become one of the corporation’s most senior journalists.
She was a correspondent with The Daily Politics on the BBC News Channel, covering the build-up to the Iraq war in the US, the accession of Eastern European countries into the EU from Prague, Warsaw and Berlin, and the US presidential race of 2004 from Washington DC.
Four years on, she was back in the US, this time covering Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency.
She said at the time: ‘I’m also lucky that I have been able to indulge the fondness and fascination with America that my year abroad gave me by covering the last two presidential elections for the BBC.’
Her fascination for British politics was no less evident during the spring of 2010 when, as the BBC’s chief political correspondent, her marathon reporting shifts helped wrest the spotlight away from senior colleagues such as Mr Robinson and Mr Landale.
Miss Kuenssberg, it turned out, was an incorrigible election geek whose passion for the most dramatic set-piece in British politics reeled the viewer in. It was now, as David Cameron’s premiership began, that her name came to be linked increasingly with the top job.
Her colleague Mr Landale was right, of course; there was no vacancy. And, with a wobbly new coalition government and a Labour leadership battle in
prospect, Mr Robinson was in no hurry to move on.
In fact, in the lull that followed the election, it was Miss Kuenssberg who moved – to ITV, for a specially created role as business editor. Few imagine it was a brief she relished to the same degree as politics. But, to the highly ambitious journalist, it served a useful purpose: it sent a clear message to the BBC that she was not prepared to let the grass grow under her feet. The move also increased her negotiating power, should the BBC want her back.
They did, of course. It was with a £200,000-a-year contract that she was lured away from ITV last year to become Newsnight’s chief correspondent. Some at the corporation considered the salary ‘completely over the top’ when viewing figures had slipped to only 600,000.
‘This deal has gone down like a cup of cold sick,’ sniffed one employee. ‘She’s no big ticket name.’
In truth, her renown was growing all the time. Among her early triumphs on Newsnight was a magisterial grilling of Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman who, as legal officer of The National Council for Civil Liberties in the 1970s, did nothing to prevent an affiliation with the group Paedophile Information Exchange, which campaigned to legalise sex with children.
Five times Miss Kuenssberg asked if it was a mistake to grant affiliate status to the notorious lobby group. On each occasion a flustered Miss Harman failed to find a form of words which got her off the hook.
Few colleagues may demur to BBC director general Tony Hall’s assessment of Miss Kuenssberg as an ‘exceptional journalist’, then, but most know little of her private life.
She is married to James Kelly, a successful management consultant who studied in Edinburgh and at Harvard, and lives with him in East London. Beyond that, details are scant indeed. Some suggest she is so dedicated to her career there is little else to know.
Certainly, as political editor, there will be ample scope for punishing hours. She will be expected to be available for commentary on Radio 4’s Today programme – where her predecessor, Mr Robinson, has taken up a job – from 7am.
And, most working days, rest is unlikely to come before she has broadcast live from Downing Street for the 10pm television news.
There is, at least, plenty of politi- cal drama in the period ahead to whet the appetite, starting with the Labour leadership election.
After that comes the election of a new London mayor to replace Boris Johnson, the EU referendum and – if David Cameron keeps his promise – the Tory party race to replace him before 2020.
That, of course, is the year of the next General Election. Pretenders to the title could hardly expect the First Lady of BBC politics to entertain thoughts of pastures new before that little piece of parliamentary business is complete.