LABOUR has accused the BBC of being repeatedly slanted and biased in its election coverage, giving Boris Johnson and the Tories an “unfair electoral advantage”.
With less than a week to go to polling day, Andrew Gwynne, Labour’s campaign chief, has fired off an angry letter to Lord Hall, Director General of the BBC, demanding its “unfairness is urgently corrected...in what is left of this campaign”.
Mr Gwynne highlighted what his party termed “anti-Labour framing” in its election coverage and claimed Boris Johnson had been allowed to “pick and choose” his BBC platform after refusing to be quizzed by interview Andrew Neil.
Labour, he said, had been given a “clear understanding Boris Johnson had agreed the same terms” to Jeremy Corbyn, who has already been interviewed by Mr Neil despite what the party said were its concerns about the Scot’s “well-known conservative political leanings”.
In his letter, Mr Gwynne said the Opposition had submitted “numerous examples” of biased treatment but, thus far, had received no substantive response.
This imbalance, he argued, had been compounded by a significant amount of BBC content drawing on the political agenda of the Tory-supporting Press.
“The BBC does not have a role as a protagonist in the General Election,” declared Mr Gwynne. “If the Conservatives are allowed to ‘play’ or manipulate the BBC and this behaviour goes unchecked, then the corporation will have effectively been complicit in giving the Conservative Party an unfair electoral advantage,” he added.
- READ MORE: The Andrew Neil Interviews: Nigel Farage
Last night, Mr Neil threw down an on-air challenge to the Prime Minister, who has thus far refused to submit himself to an interview by the forensic political interrogator and, indeed last night, made clear he would not be interviewed by ITV’s Julie Etchingham either.
The Scot said: "There is no law, no Supreme Court ruling, that can force Mr Johnson to participate in a BBC leaders' interview. But the Prime Minister of our nation will, at times, have to stand up to President Trump, President Putin, President Xi of China. So, it was surely not expecting too much he spend half an hour standing up to me."
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