BBC staff spread Far-Left conspiracy theories around “fascist” Rishi Sunak cancelling election, leaked messages show

In November 2023, one BBC employee wrote “How explicitly fascist do you have to be?”, linking to a tweet showing Rishi Sunak and Italian prime minister Georgia Meloni.

Criticism of the Conservative Party, its ministers and Rishi Sunak is frequent on the BBC’s “Global News” Slack channel, where employees discuss current affairs.

One poster, writing on 19 January 2024, claimed that “There’s a school of thought that believes that the government will look for any reason to cancel the next election for “security reasons”” and linked to a news article about Nato warnings of war with Russia; the BBC employee wrote “This sort of story [about Nato] should be viewed with that in mind”.

A colleague replied “There’ll be riots if they cancel it” while the original poster responded: “Sunak’s latest plan, going into the election is: “The plan is working”.”

“That would be strengthened in a time of war or conflict, and the majority of the people you hear on the TV or radio would happily push that narrative in such a time.”

The employee, who displays pronouns “he/him” on his Slack profile, continued: “Bibi Netanyahu’s arguably using a conflict to stay in power, so there is recent precedent for it”.

Other comments from BBC employees, all written since October 2023, describe the Conservatives as “evil”, Rishi Sunak as a “fascist” and “on the ropes” and criticise the appointment of “Tory cronies on the [BBC] board”.

Rafe Heydel-Mankoo, a broadcaster and historian, told GB News: “While it is not surprising that the BBC is staffed with people who have a passionate hatred of the Conservative Party, it is shocking that they are so open with their Left-wing political opinions within the corporation.”

“The BBC pays dozens of journalists to work debunking so-called ‘disinformation’, yet it is BBC employees themselves who spread conspiracy theories on internal communication channels about Rishi Sunak potentially cancelling the general election, something he has no power to do.”

“These comments were published by BBC staff, to BBC staff, including editors, journalists and producers, none of whom thought it proper to remove the comments or raise their concerns to those who posted them. This suggests the BBC condones these Far-Left conspiracies.

“Our public broadcaster has a duty to impartiality, however, it is staffed with people who are overwhelmingly on the Left and feel so confident in expressing their fringe views they post them openly on BBC chat forums. Tim Davie must take responsibility for overseeing a staff who are openly mocking licence fee payers and all BBC employees who take their duty to impartiality seriously.”

In January, one BBC staffer linked to an opinion poll with poor results for the Conservatives and wrote “BREAKING: The Conservative Party”.

Four other employees reacted to the post by displaying a praying emoji.

One BBC colleague wrote “as good as that looks, we don’t have a proportional voting system, so l take it with a pinch of salt” while another linked to a tactical voting website called Stop The Tories.

A BBC employee wrote in the same thread: “they [the Lib Dems] got into bed with the devil [the Tories] and it came back to haunt them like karma”.

Another comment read: “I personally don’t think Starmer will be radical enough. I feel like he’ll fall into the ‘Obama trap’”.

Connor Tomlinson, a broadcaster and journalist, said: “Had the staff at the BBC read the writings of Benito Mussolini or Giovanni Gentile, they would realise that Rishi Sunak bears no resemblance to the architects of twentieth century fascism.”

“They are presumably using it as a pejorative indistinguishable from ‘authoritarian’ or ‘far right’. However, it would be hard to argue that a British-Indian Prime Minister, who has overseen record increases in legal and illegal immigration, and who minted coins claiming that ‘Diversity built Britain’, has governed as an ethnonationalist or White identitarian.”

“What this does demonstrate is that the UK’s national broadcaster has allowed radical Left-wing politics to become hegemonic.”

Harrison Pitt, senior editor at The European Conservative, said: “Only a few months ago, Rishi Sunak stood in front of No. 10 and waxed lyrical about “the multicultural society we are building together.” Forcing a propagandistic, diversity-obsessed narrative onto a host population that never asked for it—let alone voted in its favour—is not even centre-right, let alone fascist.”

“Sunak is less of a far-right dictator in the making than he is an unwitting race communist with Californian characteristics. It tells us everything we need to know about the grotesque bias at the BBC that even public figures insufficiently to the left of Blair are regarded with suspicion by its publicly funded employees.”

The BBC was approached for comment.