Ministers to boycott ‘shameless’ Maitlis over her claims of a Tory agent at BBC
CABINET Ministers are planning to boycott Emily Maitlis, saying they will refuse to appear on the former BBC presenter’s podcast in the wake of the row over her comments about the Corporation’s impartiality rules.
In a speech at the Edinburgh Television Festival last week, the former Newsnight host accused BBC bosses of caving in too quickly with an apology after government complaints about a monologue she delivered about Dominic Cummings’s notorious lockdown trip to Barnard Castle.
Ms Maitlis – who quit the BBC earlier this year to join media group Global – also claimed without naming him that current BBC board member Sir Robbie Gibb, formerly director of communications for Theresa May, was an ‘active agent of the Conservative Party’.
She also infuriated Culture Secretary Nadine Dories by likening her on Twitter to US Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has propagated far-Right, white supremacist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and supported calls to execute prominent Democratic politicians, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Ms Maitlis, made the comparison after Ms Dorries criticised the ‘witchhunt’ investigation by MPs into Boris Johnson’s behaviour during Partygate.
Last night, a senior Government source claimed that Ms Maitlis has been messaging Ministers directly to ask them to take part on the daily podcast she presents with former BBC presenter Jon Sopel after the bookings ‘dried up’.
The source said: ‘Maitlis is shameless. Her left-leaning, antiTory views coloured her reporting at the BBC at the time.
‘Now she is desperate to stir up a row to promote the new podcast. Yet while she is slagging off the Government, they’re also begging Cabinet Ministers to come on the show. No one will go on though. It won’t be a fair interview, just another opportunity for the left-wing prima donnas to concoct a political row.’
Yesterday, BBC grandee David Dimbleby denied there was a ‘cabal’ of Tory supporters at the top of the Corporation and he criticised Ms Maitlis’s Newsnight monologue in 2020 on Mr Cummings’s Barnard Castle trip in which she said the No10 aide ‘broke the rules’ and ‘made those who struggled to keep to the rules feel like fools’.
Her comments – which led to 20,000 complaints – had been approved by the Newsnight editorial team. But Mr Dimbleby, 83, said: ‘The things she said, I think, should have been questions – not statements.’
Mr Dimbleby also played down Ms Maitlis’s claim that the BBC rebuked Newsnight in response to a protest from the Government. ‘I mean, there is a call from Number 10 every bloody morning of the week, you know, whoever’s in power,’ he said. Mr Dimbleby conceded that Sir Robbie had objected to the appointment of exHuffPost UK editor Jess Brammar as the BBC’s executive news editor of news channels, but added: ‘The interesting point about this is, Jess Brammar was appointed.’
Ex-BBC News host Simon McCoy said Ms Maitlis’s attack on Sir Robbie’s role on the board ‘perhaps says more about her politics than his’.
In an article for the Daily Telegraph, Mr McCoy wrote: ‘As is drummed into you on day one as a BBC staffer, the Corporation is in the enviable position of receiving vast sums of public money in the form of the licence fee, and with that comes an obligation, beyond what is set out in law, to be impartial and accurate.’
However, in The Times yesterday, BBC insiders said Ms Maitlis was right to call out Sir Robbie as an ‘active agent’ of the Tory Party.
Last night, as the debate continued, it emerged that in an interview with The Sunday Times, the BBC’s former Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg said: ‘I’ve never been told what to say – or what not to say, maybe more importantly.’
Ms Maitlis was approached for comment.