𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Nigel Farage blasted the BBC for being “institutionally biased for decades” in a furious attack at a Reform UK press conference. The Reform leader warned that the licence fee “cannot survive” as it currently stands.

The Clacton MP hit out at the corporation amid a row over the way a speech by the US president was edited for Panorama. Mr Farage said he spoke to an angry Mr Trump on Friday amid the ongoing furore.

Speaking at a Reform press conference this morning, Mr Farage said: “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.”

Mr Farage highlighted how more people were opting to not pay the BBC licence fee.

He 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 is cannot survive, it is wholly unsustainable.”

Mr Farage later revealed that Mr Trump’s comments to him were “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.”

It comes after the BBC’s director-general Tim Davie and chief executive of BBC News Deborah Turness quit over the row yesterday.