“Rotten to the Core?” Nigel Farage Drops a Bombshell on the BBC

Reform UK’s leader yesterday vowed to end the BBC licence fee.

Nigel Farage branded the broadcaster ‘rotten to the core’, claiming it has become a ‘byword for sleaze, hypocrisy, arrogance, anti-Semitism and worse’ as the corporation fights for its future.

He described its misleading Panorama editing of Donald Trump‘s 2021 speech – stitching together two sections which he had actually voiced nearly an hour apart – as the last straw.

The resulting backlash culminated in director-general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness resigning.

The BBC was also forced to apologise to the US President, but has said it will not pay him compensation despite his threats to sue, initially for $1 billion but now for up to $5 billion.

It has prompted questions about the future of the broadcaster following a series of scandals.

Writing in the Daily Mail, Mr. Farage said: ‘I believe that its overhaul is long overdue. In particular, the licence fee as we know it has to go – and for good.

‘Contrary to false rumours spread by my critics, Reform UK does not wish or intend to abolish the BBC in its entirety.

Mr Farage said Reform believed ‘fundamental change’ was needed at the BBC.

‘We want to keep and enhance what’s good about the corporation. Its news reporting and the World Service are critically important to our national life – though a commitment to true impartiality must run through the newsroom, top to bottom.’

He added that there needed to be a ‘fundamental change’ to the way the BBC is funded as he pledged to alter its charter under a Reform government.

‘Let us be frank,’ Mr Farage writes, ‘the licence fee is an appallingly regressive tax, the same to a billionaire as to a bankrupt. Those who do not stump up the £174.50 annual fee are liable to a fine – anyone who fails to pay a fine imposed by a court faces being sent to jail.’

The Government will begin its consultation on the BBC’s Royal Charter this year, with renewal to take place in 2027.