GB News: mouthpiece of the right

By Joe Langabeer

[This is Part One of a two-part article]

If you have been in blissful ignorance over the past few years, you might have missed the birth of the right-wing media machine, GB News, polluting the airwaves with racist dog-whistles and a conservative agenda, while clearly attempting to build on the rise of Reform UK and its project leader, Nigel Farage.

Night after night, we are fed the opinions of Farage and other current and former right-wing politicians as they stare down the camera and blur the lines between news and opinion. Although Ofcom has attempted to investigate the channel in the past, it dropped its impartiality inquiries after the High Court overturned the regulator’s rulings against politicians presenting the news. It was a predictable move by the court, made up as it is by those who move in the same circles as Farage and Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg.

The failure of Ofcom reflects a broader problem with the establishment of which GB News pretends it is not a part. It acts as though it’s an outsider, fighting for the “true” voice of Britain. But it only fights for that voice in name. The network’s main investment doesn’t even come from Britain, but from a private investment firm called Legatum, based in the United Arab Emirates.

Yet their venture into GB News is not a profitable one. According to the Press Gazette, the channel has seen losses of up to £100mn, and £42mn the year before, although revenue is increasing through digital and advertising income. Media moguls like Rupert Murdoch wouldn’t touch such a venture for fear it would yield insufficient returns.

Wealthy Beginnings

It will rarely be profitable for those financing it, but it is being bankrolled precisely because of its potential political influence, and ability to shape policy. As such it a danger to the labour movement and workers in general. With regulators unwilling or unable to act, it is up to the labour movement to expose GB News for what it really is. It is a racist project designed to hand the right-wing more power in Britain than they have ever had before.

When GB News first launched, it was plagued by technical issues and a revolving door of high-profile presenters who barely lasted a fortnight on air. Andrew Neil, once a Thatcherite Spectator editor, who later became one of the BBC’s most recognisable political interviewers, decided to jump ship to become the GB News headline act.

As well as Legatum, the channel was funded by Paul Marshall, one of Britain’s most successful hedge fund managers, though his success owes less to personal ability than to inherited privilege. His father worked for Unilever, and like many members of the establishment, Marshall was privately educated. In the 1990s, he founded one of London’s first hedge funds, Marshall Wace.

Some of his start-up capital — $25mn — came from friends and family, while the rest, $50mn, was provided by George Soros. The fund went on to amass over $29bn in assets, with The Sunday Times Rich List ranking them among the UK’s ten wealthiest fund managers, with an estimated fortune of £465mn each, according to a Financial Times profile of Marshall in 2019.

Marshall bought The Spectator for £100mn, Britain’s oldest and most influential right-wing magazine, whose purpose, as ever, is to defend the capitalist class. He has since gone on to co-found GB News, pumping in millions to keep it afloat.

GB News is a propaganda machine

But unlike Murdoch, whose sole focus is profit and maintaining the power structures that keep him rich, GB News is designed for a different purpose. It is a propaganda machine with growing influence. It feeds on genuine public anger, but manipulating it towards scapegoats – “the other” – when in reality, the true culprits are foreign investment firms and right-wing pundits who serve the capitalist class. GB News exists to defend them.

Now, GB News is entering a new phase of global ambition, with The Late Show Live, a feature programme aimed at American audiences. It will even be broadcast on Trump Media’s streaming platform, Truth+, though you can also find it on YouTube, if you truly hate yourself.

In fact, Donald Trump himself has recently appeared on GB News, using the platform to bridge the gap between American and British right-wing politics. His interview was predictably self-serving, much of it spent denying his links to Jeffrey Epstein, attacking Joe Biden, and boasting about his ongoing threats to sue the BBC for a staggering $5bn.

Trump accused the BBC of bias against right-wing figures like himself and Nigel Farage, turning the segment into yet another tirade against the corporation and state broadcasting in general. The interviewer, as you would expect, did nothing to challenge any of his claims. This reveals something worrying: GB News’s growing international influence.

With a new pivot towards US-style programming and its embrace of American reactionary politics, GB News is steadily building transatlantic alliances. And if its current trajectory continues, we can expect even more high-profile appearances from figures within the global far right — all part of its mission to export the politics of division and deceit.

GBN launch was a disaster

At the start of GB News, Andrew Neil and a group of relatively unknown hosts were ready to launch what was promised to be a haven of “free speech” — a channel that would cover the subjects “no one else dared to touch.” That was precisely why Neil wanted to front the network. He believed GB News would become an uncensored voice for Britain’s so-called “silent majority”, although the truth was that the BBC had already allowed him more than enough freedom to air his views.

However, the launch was nothing short of a disaster. Technical failures plagued the broadcast, live feeds cut out, microphones failed, and at times sets collapsed or construction continued in the background during live segments. Combined with the channel’s rapid shift in tone during its opening weeks, fixating on “cancel culture” and the idea that everything under the sun could be labelled “woke”, Neil soon took a “holiday” from which he never returned.

Since leaving, Neil has claimed he didn’t anticipate the editorial direction would become so bad. But while he might crave public sympathy for his new-found disdain for GB News, it’s difficult to muster much for someone who was reportedly earning close to a quarter of a million pounds to front the channel. Farage, who would later become the station’s defining figure, earns roughly double that at £400,000 a year, though it is reported that he’s paid more than that: with the obscene sum of £100,000 a month.

Rising Political Influencers

With the shift towards “cancel culture” and a shallow brand of right-wing opinion built on filibuster and outrage, GB News needed new faces to lend it credibility. The aim was twofold: to show that the channel was here to stay, and to create the illusion that it offered serious political coverage.

The first major signing was Lee Anderson, a former Tory MP who later defected to Reform. Anderson made his name through cruel remarks about the poorest in society. He infamously claimed that food banks were unnecessary because the working class lacked cooking and budgeting skills, arguing that nutritious meals could be made for 30p a portion.

Anderson presents himself as a man of the people, a former miner from a working-class background, who once even served as a Labour councillor, working for Gloria De Piero, before she left Labour over the alleged antisemitism of Jeremy Corbyn. De Piero now works for and presents GB News herself.

Another GB News recruit is Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former Tory MP and cabinet minister, so detached from ordinary life that it’s remarkable he has any audience at all among supposedly “working-class” viewers. Rees-Mogg was born into privilege, the son of William Rees-Mogg, also a Tory MP, who as head of the Arts Council oversaw savage cuts to public funding. William was also editor of The Times and sat on the BBC Board of Governors during its transformation towards a more market-driven institution.

Jacob continues his father’s ideological mission by railing nightly against migrants and the state of the nation from his GB News studio throne, rarely offering any meaningful analysis of Britain’s decline. He may not shape culture as his father once did, but he remains committed to protecting his wealth. In a report from The Guardian, Rees-Mogg earned £324,000 in 2023 for his GB News role.

Timidity of the regulator, Ofcom

For the network, such figures are essential. Their political notoriety gives an illusion of authority. Viewers are invited to see them as legitimate and experienced voices, even as they use their authority to spread right-wing talking points dressed up as “news.”

For a long time, GB News has been allowed to get away with its right-wing campaign because of the weakness of the media regulator, Ofcom. Like that other toothless regulator, Ofwat, Ofcom is publicly funded, but in this case, its money comes directly from the very broadcasters it is supposed to regulate.

When a member of the public requested information in 2024 about who funds Ofcom, the regulator refused to disclose it, claiming the details were “commercially sensitive” and exempt from public release. Despite its claims of transparency, Ofcom’s funding remains anything but.

Failed court challenge to GB News

Ofcom has meakly tried to challenge GB News from time to time, though never with much success. Once it launched an inquiry into GB News for allowing serving politicians to present “news” and host current affairs programmes, notably Jacob Rees-Mogg, who continued to appear nightly, despite sitting at the time as a MP.

However, when the case reached the High Court, a judge overturned Ofcom’s previous rulings against Rees-Mogg, arguing that his broadcasts were not in breach of impartiality rules! Ofcom then backed down entirely, softening its rules so that politicians like Farage, Rees-Mogg and Anderson could continue to present shows without consequence.

In October 2024, the Good Law Project reported, that Ofcom found GB News in breach of the broadcasting code after a presenter repeatedly made vile claims linking LGBTQ+ people to paedophilia. GB News later took the segment off air in June, citing “low ratings,” and the presenter was made to issue a token apology. Ofcom, in turn, accepted the apology as sufficient and imposed no further penalty, allowing GB News to carry on unscathed once again.

The Good Law Project is now pursuing legal action against GB News for its repeated violations of the broadcasting code, as well as against Ofcom itself for its failure to hold the channel accountable. The issue extends beyond hate speech, into the heart of broadcasting impartiality.

It is, of course, impossible for any politician to present “news” in an unbiased and objective manner, because there is so much in the news that is about interpretation and what is thought important. But it is one thing to allow all politicians access to broadcasting – according to their public support, as would be justifiable – another thing entirely when only right-wing and far-right politicians are offered access. Allowing Tory and Reform MPs to use a national broadcasting platform to push their own propaganda is a scandal and a clear failure of regulation.

MPs are already paid over £90,000 a year, plus expenses, to represent their constituencies. It ought to be the policy of the labour movement, and pushed through Parliament by Labour MPs, that MPs should not be allowed any other paid occupation.

“Free speech”…but only for billionaires

As it is currently set up, Ofcom depends for its income on the very broadcasters it is supposed to oversee, so it can never be truly independent. It remains beholden to its paymasters, the large commercial media operators. Ofcom effectively bows down to GB News because the network has the money to buy influence and the ability to pollute our airwaves

Supporters of the current arrangements for broadcasting and the press claim that they are in favour of “free speech,” but what kind of free speech is it, when ordinary people and the labour movement cannot access the same platforms, newspapers or resources to express their views?

The labour movement can have no confidence at all in Ofcom, which has appeased GB News and allowed it to relentlessly manipulate public discourse. Far better if both Ofcom and GB News were consigned to history.

In a class society, it is the dominant class – in this case the capitalist establishment that will always dominate culture, media and the press. In a socialist society, the press would be available to all and not dominated by a handful of billionaires. Whatever press and broadcasting standards are required would be determined by democratic bodies, elected by the workers in the industry, the ‘consumers’ and the government.

Socialists should not support a press that is ‘tame’ or one that only reflects the government of the day. But a truly ‘free’ press and broadcasting sector is one that is publicly owned and serves all sections of society, including political opposition according to their support.

The press and media play a huge role in informing and educating the public and thus in helping to form people’s opinions and views. It is not something that can be left to handful of self-interested billionaires.