A Conservative Peer has claimed that Brexit boss Nigel Farage has been banned by one of the BBC’s top music programmes, despite it hosting other top party leaders and supposedly being bound by the public broadcaster’s commitment to impartiality.
According to an upcoming biography of Lord Ashcroft, BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs programme will never host Reform UK leader Nigel Farage as it did with Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, the Times of London reports.
The Tory peer, citing sources from within the British public broadcaster, claimed that Farage has “effectively been blacklisted” from the programme over fears that his mere presence would upset the staff of the long-running programme in which guests are asked which eight recordings they would take with them in a hypothetical stranding on a deserted island.
“Farage is regarded instinctively by many BBC staff as unacceptable. At least half the staff would think Radio 4 had become an ‘unsafe space’ if he was on Desert Island Discs. Nothing would be written down, it’s just classic liberal-left BBC,” the source is said to have told Lord Ashcroft.
“It’s impossible to state quite how snobbish it is, especially on this kind of programme where political bias goes unrecognised. I also think they’re worried that if Farage went on, other potential guests might start a boycott.”
A Reform UK spokesman told The Times that the party had reached out to the BBC to inquire if it would host Mr Farage on the programme, but such overtures were shut down.
Responding to the claims, Mr Farage said: “I have come to expect nothing less from the BBC — their blatant bias has been obvious for years. The BBC will have a rude awakening under a Reform government.”
The Reform leader also redoubled his call to “abolish the BBC licence fee, a mandatory fee for anyone who watches television in the UK that funds the BBC in exchange for supposedly providing bias-free news.
The public broadcaster has long faced accusations of bias, particularly regarding the 2016 Brexit referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. While a majority of the country backed the campaign to leave the bloc, this sentiment was not reflected in the BBC’s coverage.
According to a study by the News Watch think tank, which analysed Radio 4 coverage of the issue, there was clear evidence of bias. The report stated, “There were no attempts in any programme to explore the benefits of leaving the EU, but conversely, Brexit came under sustained negative attack.”
A separate report from the Civitas think tank found that in the ten years before the Referendum, just three per cent of guests on BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today programme held Eurosceptic beliefs. The programme was also found to have consistently excluded pro-Brexit voices from the left of the political spectrum, falsely giving the impression that the desire to leave the European Union was confined to the right.
Polling has consistently found that the public views the broadcaster as biased and untrustworthy.
The BBC has denied that it has banned Mr Farage from Desert Island Discs, with a spokesman saying: “We do not ban any individuals from appearing on Desert Island Discs and that includes Mr Farage.”