Gb news

The winds of change are blowing through Paddington, with news reaching Steerpike of something of a bloodbath over at GB News. The self-proclaimed 'People's Channel' is currently undergoing a shake-up in its personnel and programming, with staff being told today of changes to take effect from the beginning of next week. All individual shows between midday to 4 p.m are to be effectively scrapped and replaced. Stars Gloria De Piero, the former MP, and economics journalist Liam Halligan will therefore no longer work on their current shows: instead they will both expand on their work on other features. De Piero also gets to co-host a new weekday show, titled simply: 'GB Newsday.

I can’t claim to know any behind-the-scenes rivalries or boardroom brouhaha motivating Andrew Neil’s departure from GB News but I am glad to see him go. Neil is out at the still ill-defined channel which can’t decide whether it’s a populist classical-liberal network, standing up to authoritarian cancel culture, or a British version of Fox News. It excels at neither. Given wobbly ratings, staff departures and one instance of very off-brand knee-taking, it's not entirely surprising that Neil has finally had his fill and walked away. He was not only chairman but the underwriter of the promise — issued in his opening monologue — that the channel would dissent from the broadcasting mainstream with quality, rigour, open-mindedness and intelligence.

The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, isn’t normally given to waffle, which makes his maiden appearance on GB News all the more remarkable. Asked by Andrew Neil who – government or homeowner – would have to pay the estimated £10,000 per household cost of replacing domestic gas boilers with heat pumps to help reach the target of net zero emissions by 2050 Sunak replied:  'So when you say the alternative is the household or the government, the government’s money is the people’s money. And that’s my point when I say ultimately we all pay. The government does have any separate money of its own' As a general point of political philosophy, it was a fair enough statement.

GB News, the UK’s first new news channel in decades, launched on Sunday night with a monologue from the estimable Andrew Neil, setting out the channel’s philosophy.  ‘We will puncture the pomposity of our elites and politics, business, media and academia and expose their growing promotion of cancel culture for the threat to free speech and democracy that it is’, he said. Just 48 hours later and GB News’s detractors have already proven him right.

British TV viewers have never had so many channels to watch, yet they've also never had so little choice. The Brexit referendum exposed this lack of political diversity all too clearly. As a panellist on Radio 4’s The Moral Maze for 20 years, I suppose I was something of a BBC luvvie. No doubt I was still seen as a bit of a maverick by some, but I was accepted on the media scene. However, when I casually mentioned back in 2016 that I was going to vote Leave, things changed.  'But you’re an intelligent, well-educated person, Claire', said one senior producer. From that moment on, in studios and green rooms, I was greeted with a familiar sneer. From my position of privilege, it was hardly a problem.