https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/11/bbc-accused-of-reform-bias-michael-deacon
What Planet Are These Lunatics From?
11 September 2025 7:00am.
If the BBC really is supporting Nigel Farage, it does a tremendously effective job of concealing it Credit: Jeff Overs/BBC via Getty Images All this week, the BBC has been repeatedly accused of bias in its coverage of Reform. Nothing unusual about that, you might think. But you’d be wrong.
Because right now, the BBC isn’t being accused of bias against Reform – it’s being accused of bias towards it.
You may be thinking: “What? The BBC? Biased towards Reform? What planet are these lunatics on?” I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to that particular question. But I do know that this belief, however gibberingly unhinged it may seem to the rest of us, is gaining serious traction on the centre-Left. And I think I know how it began.
Three months ago, we reported that BBC executives had held talks about how to win over Reform-voting viewers. To prevent them from deserting the broadcaster, the executives vowed to ensure that the views of this increasingly sizeable demographic were better represented in news coverage.
|  | BBC boss: We need to serve Reform votersThe BBC needs to serve Reform voters because the party is so popular, its chairman has said. |
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A perfectly reasonable plan. Unfortunately for the BBC, it has backfired. People who loathe Reform seem to have convinced themselves that our national broadcaster has suddenly been taken over by the Nigel Farage fan club.
Take Alastair Campbell, the Blairite spin doctor turned champion of probity in public life. At the weekend, he complained that a BBC report on the Reform party conference was “like a press handout” from Reform itself. He then described a second BBC report as “another lively shiny press release from the Beeb Reform media machine.”
He wasn’t alone. The historian William Dalrymple – who, like Mr Campbell, happens to present a podcast for Gary Lineker’s Goalhanger productions – claimed, in all apparent seriousness, that BBC News “is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform”. More bizarrely still, he accused the BBC’s political editor, Chris Mason, of displaying “breathless enthusiasm for Farage”.
Meanwhile, the Labour peer George Foulkes used an appearance on BBC News to scold it for supposedly not “giving equal challenge and equal questioning to people like Nigel Farage as you’re doing to people in the Labour party”.
And if you think all that sounds mad, wait till you hear what the Lib Dems have done. They’ve launched a campaign called “Balance the BBC”, calling on the broadcaster to give Reform less coverage – because the current amount “is dangerous and it has to stop”. Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dems’ leader, fumed: “The BBC are constantly fawning over Farage’s every move.”
| | What is the point of Ed Davey?This childish boycott betrays a serious lack of seriousness |
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ALL TRUE!
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All this week, the BBC has been repeatedly accused of bias in its coverage of Reform. Nothing unusual about that, you might think. But you’d be wrong.
You may be thinking: “What? The BBC? Biased towards Reform? What planet are these lunatics on?” I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to that particular question. But I do know that this belief, however gibberingly unhinged it may seem to the rest of us, is gaining serious traction on the centre-Left. And I think I know how it began.
Three months ago, we reported that BBC executives had held talks about how to win over Reform-voting viewers. To prevent them from deserting the broadcaster, the executives vowed to ensure that the views of this increasingly sizeable demographic were better represented in news coverage.
BBC boss: We need to serve Reform voters
The BBC needs to serve Reform voters because the party is so popular, its chairman has said.
Take Alastair Campbell, the Blairite spin doctor turned champion of probity in public life. At the weekend, he complained that a BBC report on the Reform party conference was “like a press handout” from Reform itself. He then described a second BBC report as “another lively shiny press release from the Beeb Reform media machine.”
He wasn’t alone. The historian William Dalrymple – who, like Mr Campbell, happens to present a podcast for Gary Lineker’s Goalhanger productions – claimed, in all apparent seriousness, that BBC News “is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform”. More bizarrely still, he accused the BBC’s political editor, Chris Mason, of displaying “breathless enthusiasm for Farage”.
Meanwhile, the Labour peer George Foulkes used an appearance on BBC News to scold it for supposedly not “giving equal challenge and equal questioning to people like Nigel Farage as you’re doing to people in the Labour party”.
And if you think all that sounds mad, wait till you hear what the Lib Dems have done. They’ve launched a campaign called “Balance the BBC”, calling on the broadcaster to give Reform less coverage – because the current amount “is dangerous and it has to stop”. Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dems’ leader, fumed: “The BBC are constantly fawning over Farage’s every move.”
What is the point of Ed Davey?
This childish boycott betrays a serious lack of seriousness
ALL TRUE!