Media Regulator and Government Silent as UK Democracy Subverted
Not only is Man of the PayPal Nigel Farage using broadcaster GB News for income and a loudspeaker: the MP also holds shares and voting rights in it
A free press and independent media are lodestones of a democracy, providing impartial information to citizens and holding those in power to account. Or at least that’s what school textbooks say. The reality has never been further from that ideal in the UK, yet those with the power to fix it have sat on their hands.
The UK’s Office of Communications, or Ofcom, has a great many responsibilities as a regulator, having replaced five separate bodies in December 2003. These include licensing commercial radio and television services, which can have their licences revoked should they not comply with the associated terms and the Broadcasting Code.
Ofcom has had a rollercoaster ride in dealing with GB News, a Fox News-like radio and TV channel – less glossy, toothy, and slick but just as fake-tanned – since it launched in July 2021. It’s hosted on multiple platforms in the UK and also in Australia. It’s primarily owned by odious hedge fund manager and Mumford & Sons daddy Sir Paul Marshall – which is worse? Tough call – and investment firm Legatum through holding company All Perspectives Ltd. Its CEO Angelos Frangopoulos appears to have presided over a toxic culture, and the channel has always operated at a loss. Yet, mysteriously, it continues to thrive.
I’m going to skim past hostile workplace issues, opaque financing choices, and Ofcom’s failure to act against multiple GB News licence breaches, only to lose in the High Court once it finally did, all amply covered elsewhere. Let’s zoom in on a presenter who’s been involved and on air from the beginning: Nigel Farage.
Ferreting about
It’s only a year and a bit since one of two directors of Reform 2025 Ltd, formerly Reform UK Party Ltd, formerly The Brexit Party Ltd, announced that he wouldn’t be standing as a candidate in the UK general election. My theory at the time was that he’d realised there was quite a bit of money he wouldn’t be able to make as an elected representative. The reason he gave publicly was that it was more important to make sure Donald Trump became preznunt again. Sounds legit.
Just a few weeks later, there was the sound of a screeching u-turn and the acrid smell of burnt rubber. Nigel Paul Farage had decided that he would, after all, have a stab at being an MP. You know the old saying: “Eighth time lucky”!
My next theory was that Farage realised no one stops anyone doing anything anymore so he might as well have a bash. Though the recent company name change – suggesting a possible connection with Project 2025 in Trump’s America – also raised the question for me of who had spent that fortnight convincing him, and how. Or maybe he thought he’d build a bit of drama around the whole thing. That girl does love some drama, honey.
There’s a “murky corporate structure” underpinning the limited company fronting as a political party and magafication factory. And it’s all too easy to be suspicious of race-riot-inciting Islamophobe conspiracy theorists who copy Trump and Musk in their ‘governance’ of local authorities while fighting amongst themselves like ferrets down raspberry trousers. Or being forced to resign, or being under police investigation, almost as soon as they take up office.
But: a side note. Let’s pick our battles. For example, on 12 June , the party-private-limited-company was registered by Companies House as having, on 16 May, changed its name from Reform UK Party Ltd to Reform 2025 Ltd, with the ‘Person of Significant Control’ (PSC, the true owner of Reform 2025 Ltd), now being Reform UK Party Ltd. Yes, it looks like a shell game. But accountant Dan Neidle says it’s probably just “a boring reorganisation of companies”.
What is not okay is a sitting Member of Parliament having his own pet media outlet from which he can sow dissent and misinformation while profiting in two different ways.
Man of the PayPal
Government ownership of broadcasting is globally pervasive and this is reflected in the UK through the BBC – which is under its own cloud, accused daily of partiality. A new report by the Centre for Media Monitoring finds its coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza is “systematically biased against Palestinians”.
The BBC has contributed significantly to making Farage the public figure he is, and frequently invites Reform UK Ltd – with only five MPs – commentators on air, while rarely including the voices of Plaid Cymru (four MPs), the Green Party (four MPs), or the Liberal Democrats (72 MPs).
Section Five of the Broadcasting Code states that “News, in whatever form, must be reported with due accuracy and presented with due impartiality.” It’s also clear that “No politician may be used as a newsreader, interviewer or reporter in any news programmes unless, exceptionally, it is editorially justified.”
Yet Farage earns significant amounts as a frequent presenter and interviewer on and “consultant” to GB News. He denies these earnings, saying they’re paid to his other company Thorn in the Side Ltd – yes, really – and that it has high overheads.
In 2024 Ofcom gave an apparent “green light to Nigel Farage and other unelected politicians to continue presenting on channels like GB News”, even during the general election campaign. Farage is now an elected MP, yet the status quo continues with the acceptance of a supine Ofcom, though there is a consultation happening. It’s not clear how long that will take or how much further damage can be done to society in the meantime.
“I’ve just been expelled from GBNews studio … when asked why I thought Ofcom should close GBNews down – I said because it’s a right-wing channel dominated by Tory and Brexit Party politicians.”
🦷 Journalist Michael Crick, Twitter, November 2023
In 2023 it was revealed that GB News had given shares in the enterprise to a number of presenters, including Farage. He started with nearly 300,000 shares through Thorn In The Side. According to Companies House, they’ve since risen to nearly 500,000. He’s one of the few presenter-shareholders with voting rights.
Farage, who declined to comment on his shareholding in GB News, told the Financial Times: “I think that the modernisation committee are aiming squarely at myself, Lee Anderson and GB News. They are clearly very scared of us.”
🦷 Daniel Thomas and Lucy Fisher, Financial Times
Of course, this isn’t the first time Farage has had a controversial relationship with a broadcaster. “Farage’s income from media appearances, especially Russia Today, increased massively in the period from 2012 to 2018. He set up a limited company “Thorn in the Side” which had an income recorded at £9,737 in 2012. By May 2018, its income had increased to £548,573.”
Half-asleep on the job
Farage is by no means the only politician making bank from media appearances. We can certainly call Ofcom’s slowness at dealing with this into question more generally.
But the breach of the Broadcasting Code in relation to Farage’s GB News appearances could not be more evident, especially now he’s an elected representative. It’s bad enough that non-Farage-containing ‘news’ coverage on the channel about Farage invariably skews to Reform 2025 Ltd. Which comes as no surprise given that he’s a vote-having shareholder. Not that the public is informed of this by GB News itself. He’s ‘just an MP’, mmmkayyyy?
Ofcom has issued a long report on all these issues, making angels dance on the head of a pin. But it hasn’t satisfactorily explained what’s editorially so ‘exceptional’ that it allows frequent and direct involvement in broadcasting by a sitting MP. In fact, its report only mentions Farage five times, in the context of older programmes and adjudications. It says nothing of his current show.
You could tussle with semantics about whether ‘presenter’ means ‘reporter’ but does the public know the difference? Is the impact on our polity any smaller?
It’s one thing for a government to have influence over broadcasting through state media. But the code doesn’t cover the situation of a sitting politician holding shares in a commercial media company on which he appears and from which he earns significant income. If that lacuna is offered as a reason not to act – much as the Electoral Commission does when waving away dodgy dealings in political parties as they’re ‘private entities’ – then the entire system of ‘regulation’ is unfit for purpose.
Why is this permitted to continue? Why does the UK Government do nothing to ensure ethics and standards are enforced in this matter? Is it afraid of being accused of political interference, instead allowing the cratering of our polity?
Ofcom is at least holding a public consultation on whether politicians should present news programmes. The deadline is 23 June. Have your say today.
And be sure to mention that this is about at least one politician having far more partial and detrimental influence than simply ‘presenting’. If they can’t or won’t deal with that they’re even worse than being unfit for purpose – they’re giving Farage a fig-leaf.