Rupa Huq blames a right-wing ‘cabal’ for the BBC’s left-wing bias scandal – naturally

Now that the BBC is in a full-blown crisis over its editorial slant, Huq has found her moment. As a member of the committee her views actually matter. It is no wonder that news programmes having been asking her to share those views. The problem, however, is that Huq’s explanation of the current BBC crisis is – how best to put it? – away with the fairies.

For Rupa Huq, what has been going on is not a crisis brought about by Michael Prescott, the BBC’s own external adviser on editorial standards highlighting its left-liberal bias over Trump, Gaza and trans issues but actually a version of what Hillary Clinton once called “the vast right-wing conspiracy”. In a series of interviews she has explained that, for example, “The BBC crisis was orchestrated by the Telegraph and is now cheered by the including discredited ex PM Boris and the present Tory party” (I have quoted this post in the same unintelligible syntax as it was published by Huq).

It's painful to watch how she manages to turn reality on its head. In the above post, she continued: “The issues in the Prescott "dossier”: trans, Gaza and Trump all feed into culture wars as I told @SkyNews.” Those are indeed the issues raised in the dossier compiled by Prescott. And yes, they are issues on which there is much focus – rightly so. But the reason they were highlighted by Prescott is precisely because the BBC’s coverage of them has been so one-sided – and deliberately so rather than as a result of one-off mistakes. Had the BBC not been so biased in its coverage, there would be no crisis. Yet for Huq, a crisis brought about because of the BBC’s left-wing bias is actually an example of how influential the right is over the BBC. Go figure.

For Huq, the most important element in the conspiracy which she details is the involvement on the board of Robbie Gibb. Given that I am writing this in the JC, I should point out that Gibb was formerly the sole shareholder in the JC after its rescue from liquidation. Indeed, for Huq that is also part of the problem. She has repeatedly raised this as if it should disqualify him from involvement with the BBC.

As a board member, Gibb sits on its editorial standards subcommittee. Since he was once a BBC producer and editor for much of his career, before becoming Theresa May’s communications director, you might think that there are few people better suited to such a role. But for Ms Huq, this is “shady” and he is acting as “supreme arbiter of news…He's a very powerful figure at the BBC... and he's quite partisan.” In another post she attacked the “secretive 4 person cabal” – what the rest of us call a sub-committee – “with Robbie Gibb as most senior” – senior as in the only former BBC journalist, who actually understands the BBC’s supposed editorial standards – who “issues edicts to broadcast more REFORM figures” – an assertion for which no evidence exists.

All conspiracy theories require leaps of logic to come together, and then they fall apart under examination. Huq’s is no different. Turning a crisis caused by the BBC's left-liberal mindset into an attack on one of the few people in the upper echelons who is on the right, based entirely on his being on the right and without a shred of evidence that he has done anything more than he is meant to do as a board member, is up there with the best of them.

Especially, of course, when you look at the number of partisan Labour figures who have been in senior BBC roles. Gavyn Davies, a long-term public Labour supporter and donor was appointed chair of the BBC in 2000. I do not recall any Labour MPs objecting to his appointment – nor to that of Greg Dyke, also a Labour supporter and donor, as Director General. Nor should they have done – both were good appointments.

But Huq has a habit of comments which defy reason. In 2022 she had the Labour whip suspended for five months after she described the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Karteng, as “superficially” black. In a rant which Keir Starmer rightly described as racist, she said: “He's superficially, he's, a black man but again he's got more in common... he went to Eton, he went to a very expensive prep school, all the way through top schools in the country…If you hear him on the Today programme you wouldn't know he's black."

For Huq, it seems, the only acceptable political views to hold are those which she holds. Depart from them and you lose your right to public service, and even to own your skin colour. Bear that in mind when next she mounts her high horse and attacks those who want to see the BBC uphold its duty to provide impartial news.