The arrival of GB News as a force in rightwing politics was captured this month when Lee Anderson, one of the station’s presenters, defected from the Conservatives, declaring live on TV: “I want my country back.”
Richard Tice, Reform UK’s leader, stood beaming next to Anderson at a Westminster press conference and then invited questions: “GB News,” he said, pointing at a journalist. “The People’s Channel”.
Anderson, a former Tory deputy chair, now has a pulpit to promote the world view of his new home Reform UK, the populist, anti-immigration party founded by Nigel Farage — who happens to be GB News’s star anchor.
With its coverage of migration and transgender rights and a scepticism towards to all things dubbed “woke” or green, GB News is shaping the way the right thinks about politics, with profound implications for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his Conservatives.
“When you speak to Tory MPs, they’ll say that all of their members watch GB News,” said one ally of Sunak. The prime minister has courted the new channel whose themes he has been happy to echo, for example claiming that extremists were plunging Britain into “mob rule”.
The media regulator Ofcom is investigating whether an hour-long Q&A with the prime minister that aired on the network breached broadcasting rules, on top of several other probes into the channel’s programmes.
If Sunak loses the general election expected this year, the next Conservative leader will soon after be chosen by party activists who often absorb their news from — and have their views shaped by — GB News.
Tim Bale, professor at Queen Mary University of London and historian of the Conservative party, said: “The channel gives a voice to what might be called the hard right of the Conservative party and amplifies it,” he said.
Bale added that GB News’s agenda risked luring the Conservatives outside what many moderate Tory voters would consider the “zone of acceptability”, taking the party down an electoral blind alley.
Launched in 2021 and bankrolled by libertarian investors such as hedge fund boss Sir Paul Marshall, lossmaking GB News has revelled in its role as a disrupter and is not exactly modest about its ambitions.
In a memo to staff this week entitled “The Greatest Story Ever Told”, GB News executive Mick Booker compared the channel to a modern day TV Noah’s ark or a biblical David that, to some, was “the saviour of the TV news world”. But, he warned, “not all saviours are warmly welcomed”.
The memo arrived just hours before media regulator Ofcom landed its biggest blows yet on the fledgling broadcaster, whose attempts to create a Fox News-style channel have tested the boundaries of what is allowed under the UK broadcasting code.
The growing importance of GB News has dismayed many in the media sector, who decry its lack of impartiality and use of serving — and potentially self-serving — Conservative politicians as presenters. GB News did not respond to a request for comment.
Former staff told the Financial Times the ambition was as much to create a platform to offer a range of different voices from what its founders saw as a left leaning mainstream media that was serving the country’s “elites” rather than ordinary people.
The highly ambitious target is to be the biggest news broadcaster — bigger than the BBC News and Sky News — by 2028. But its coverage has moved progressively further to the right of the political spectrum and closer to the fringes, according to former employees and media analysts.
In the past year alone, presenter Neil Oliver claimed coronavirus vaccinations were causing “turbo cancer”, while author Naomi Wolf described the vaccine rollout as “mass murder” comparable to the actions of “doctors in pre-Nazi Germany”.
One former staff member said the “idea was not to be full of rightwing nutters — it was not meant to be Tucker Carlson with an English accent,” referring to the former Fox News talk show host.
Conservative MPs said they sometimes received “cranky” emails from party members. “You’ll ask where did they hear this and they’ll say: ‘GB News’”, said one MP. The party is having an internal conversation formed outside the traditional media landscape.
A survey by the ConservativeHome activists’ blog in January found that 57 per cent of Tory members said they regularly watched GB News, compared with 60 per cent who watched the BBC, the behemoth that traditionally dominates the news landscape.
It is GB News’s growing use as a platform for rightwing politicians that is causing the most concern for the regulator, leading to repeated breaches of the broadcasting rules over impartiality in presenting and reporting news.
Ofcom found five such breaches from shows presented by Tory MPs such as Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, Esther McVey and her husband, Philip Davies.
While such programmes have put the channel in hot water with Ofcom, which warned that next time fines could be issued rather than a warning, they have also fuelled its success among an audience that media analysts say is underserved.
Some of its shows regularly outperform those of Sky News, while it has seen off the challenge of TalkTV, the Murdoch-backed TV provider that also launched in 2021 aimed at similar audiences — last month it moved to an online only channel.
GB News has a loyal audience based mostly in the north of England and the Midlands, according to viewing data, parts of the Red Wall — traditionally Labour voting areas that switched to Conservative in the 2019 election — that will be heavily contested in the coming general election.
Audience figures reflect the channel’s modest reach, with GB News accounting for roughly 5 per cent of viewers among all broadcasters in February, according to Barb, a industry-owned data provider.
Figures from the middle of last year revealed that about 80 per cent of its heavy viewers are over 55 and its audience consists mostly of men without degrees, according to consultants Enders Analysis.
But analysts warn there is a ceiling to its audience and that GB News will struggle financially unless it moves to a more mainstream position.
Gill Hind, director of television at Enders Analysis, said that the channel sat outside the media ecosystem. “The UK has a great reputation for being completely impartial and GB News has taken that to the limit and beyond,” she said.
Rees-Mogg said GB News was “really an outlet for the frustrations people feel which aren’t being discussed by other channels. “It’s helpful in ensuring the elected and the electorate remain connected,” he said.
Many Tory MPs believe that the influence of GB News will be pivotal in shaping the future direction of the party, along with the Daily Telegraph, which pursues a similar political agenda.
Marshall has his eyes on acquiring that newspaper title, adding it to his media stable and cementing his position as a potential leader maker for the party.
GB News’s influence is only likely to grow as the election approaches, not least if its star Farage decides to return to frontline politics with Reform UK, goading the Tories and pulling Sunak further to the right.
And waiting in the wings is its next populist presenter, Boris Johnson, who is due to start a new show ahead of the election and is still loved by many Tory activists.
The former premier has said he hopes 2024 will be a “great year for the upstart, insurgent, dynamic news channel that is GB News”, whatever the outcome of the election.
Additional reporting by Rafe Uddin
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