Laura Kuenssberg
The most divisive woman on TV today?
When Laura Kuenssberg first came to prominence, it was during the 2010 election as a BBC political correspondent. She was on our screens so much that one columnist even renamed the BBC’S coverage “Kuenssberg-o-vision”. The explanation that she gave for her stamina was simple: adrenalin, egg sandwiches and, in a nod to her heritage, Irn-bru.
Seven years on, and we know little more about this high-profile but intensely private political journalist. Yet she could lay claim – especially in these febrile times – to being the most divisive woman on television. Last Saturday, this paper published several letters that criticised her in round terms – that she “spoils the news”, “constantly snarls”, “seems incapable of differentiating between a question and a taunt” and that her “spiteful approach” to her political interviews is only made “worse” by her “apparent enjoyment”. In their condemnation, readers of this paper are far from alone. Kuenssberg is targeted on Twitter, castigated by the Corbynistas, even monstered on the more genteel Mumsnet (“Am I being unreasonable,” starts one angry discussion there, “to think Laura Kuenssberg should be sacked?”)
Of course, it is a time-honoured tradition for the BBC’S political editor to be one of the most attacked in public life – think Spitting Image and Private Eye’s mocking of John Cole’s Northern Irish accent; the derision that met Andrew Marr’s expansive arm gestures, as well as taunts that he was a Blairite cheerleader; or hundreds of pro-independence supporters in Glasgow congregating outside the BBC to demand the resignation of Nick Robinson during the Scottish referendum.
In an age when politics is increasingly polarised, Kuenssberg finds herself stuck in the middle of an increasingly nasty maelstrom, attracting vitriol from both sides. But could it be that the fatal combination of sexism, a Scottish accent and social media have made the opprobrium even more intense?
For Kuenssberg’s Left-wing critics, it doesn’t help that she has a privileged background (admittedly, as did her predecessors). She was born in Italy in 1976, and her father, Nick, is a successful businessman; her mother, Sally, has a CBE for services to child welfare. One grandfather, Dr Ekkehard von Kuenssberg, was the founder of the Royal College of General Practitioners, while the other, Lord Roberton, was a High Court judge. All three Kuenssberg children (Laura is the youngest) continue the high-achieving theme: her sister, Joanna, is currently the British High Commissioner to Mozambique; and her brother, David, a senior civil servant. Growing up, she attended a private school in Glasgow before going to Edinburgh University. She got the bug for political reporting on a year abroad in Washington at Georgetown University.
Despite these antecedents, Kuenssberg worked her way up the hard way – starting off in a local BBC station in the North-east, and serving her time as a producer before becoming a correspondent. She is regarded as a phenomenally hard worker, reporting for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme from 6am but still appearing on the BBC News at Ten only 16 hours later. “She’s an excellent
journalist, doing a very difficult job brilliantly,” says Sue Inglish, former head of political programmes at the BBC, who worked with Kuenssberg for many years. So much so, that asked for an anecdote about her, most colleagues were stumped to think of something that revealed Kuenssberg in non-work mode.
“At Millbank [where the BBC’S politics team is based], she is universally liked,” says one former political producer. “She’s also kind to her producers.”
According to a diary column in January, when flying with Theresa May to the US, Kuenssberg was stuck in the cheap upright seats owing to BBC budgets, while her commercial rivals enjoyed more luxurious reclining beds.
So why then does she attract such vitriol? “It’s the Left she gets it worst from,” says one lobby correspondent. Certainly, Corbyn supporters have never had any love for her after the BBC Trust concluded that she had inaccurately reported Jeremy Corbyn’s views about shoot-to-kill policies in the aftermath of the 2015 terror attacks in Paris, breaching the corporation’s impartiality and accuracy guidelines – although they concluded there was no evidence of bias or intent on her part.
This antipathy towards Kuenssberg has led to outright hostility. Last year, Corbyn supporters booed her when she tried to ask a question at a press conference – and it was notable that the Labour leader took several seconds before he quietened the crowd. This came a month after the campaigning group 38 Degrees had to take down an online petition asking for her to be sacked after it became a focal point for sexist abuse.
Kuenssberg doesn’t just antagonise the Left, however; she has received similar treatment at the hands of Ukip. At the party’s manifesto launch this year, she was told by various members of the party to “go back down your hole” and “f--- off ”.
“It’s amazing the amount of venom that she attracts,” says Professor
Lis Howell, who has conducted extensive research into women in broadcasting. “But then she is assertive, has a Scottish accent and she doesn’t play games that other women have done in the past to get ahead – being self-deprecating, for example.
“She’s a senior editor, so she’s not just shooting her mouth off, her opinions will be well-evidenced, but people find that difficult to deal with.”
Howell points out that we still have a problem with women in authority – for example, research shows student evaluations of lecturers will routinely give lower marks to female than male lecturers. Kuenssberg’s reluctance to swap straight questions for charm (her predecessor, Nick Robinson, will often take a more witty, quizzical approach to his prey), or the fact that she doesn’t play the conventional media game, glamorising herself or talking about her private life, adds to this. And not for her the personal interview: all she has said publicly on her family life is that she is married to a management consultant called James Kelly, and they live in east London. Social media has also played a role in turning Kuenssberg into something of a lightning rod for public vitriol. She was an enthusiastic early adopter of Twitter and, by the time she left for ITV in 2011, had built up a fervent following of around 60,000 – so much so that there were serious pieces written at the time about whether she could take her Twitter followers with her when she swapped outlets. Even her appointment to political editor played out on social media. James Harding, the BBC director of news, was said to be still on the phone to one of the unsuccessful candidates for the job when Jonathan Munro, head of newsgathering, tweeted his congratulations to Kuenssberg. (His Twitter message was swiftly deleted.)
Now she has nearly 700,000 followers and, of course, the unauthorised parody accounts any Twitter celebrity attracts. “Spend 10 minutes on Laura’s Twitter feed – the trolls are horrendous,” says the political producer: “I don’t know how she continues to engage.”
And this perhaps shows how Kuenssberg has become a symbol of today’s political climate in a polarised country where distrust of the mainstream media has grown phenomenally. As a result, the BBC’S commitment to impartiality can be seen by both sides as indicative of supporting the other. “Nick Robinson used to get accused of political bias, mostly pro-tory, and it never seemed as personal or vicious,” says the lobby correspondent. “It’s remarkable that she gets accused of being in bed with both Labour and the Tories – so she must be doing something right.”
‘It’s remarkable she gets accused of being in bed with both Labour and Tories’
‘She’s not just shooting her mouth off, her opinions are well-evidenced’