Farage warns the BBC the licence fee ‘cannot survive’

The Reform UK leader has launched a scathing attack on the BBC at a press conference accusing the corporation of being “institutionally biased for decades.”

Nigel Farage slammed the BBC over the editing of the US President’s speech on Panorama, he said that he spoke with Donald Trump on Friday and he was angry.

Farage said at a Reform press conference on Monday, “I well remember the Wilson report two decades ago saying the BBC were not covering areas like Europe and immigration with any sense of impartiality.

And you could add on to that net zero, climate change, their interpretation of the horrors that have happened in Gaza and now of course the US president.

“I spoke to the president on Friday. He just said to me: ‘Is this how you treat your best ally?’ It’s quite a powerful comment.

Farage added, “If the BBC doesn’t now get a grip, get somebody in from the outside, somebody who has got a history and a culture of changing organisations, of turning them around, then I think what you would see within the next couple of years are many, many millions just refusing, just not wanting to have the license fee.

“We need a very much slimmed down BBC. When it comes to entertainment and sport and many other areas like that, they should compete with everyone else for a subscription model. That’s the modern world that we live in.

“The licence fee as currently cannot survive, it is wholly unsustainable.”

The Reform leader said that the US President’s comments on the matter was “not in a quotable form.”

He said, “If I was the US President, if I was the person making sure that the UK had security guarantees that meant that it could be defended, whereas on its own it would be helpless, and I’d been stitched up on the eve of a national election.

“I mean people talk about election interference, what the BBC did was election interference.

“If you put yourself in Donald Trump’s shoes I think you’ll understand why when I had a chat with him on Friday he made his feelings on the subject known to me in no uncertain terms and not in a quotable form.”