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The leader of Britain's largest trade union says she can understand why voters are turning away from Labour - because the cost of living has either "stagnated or it's got worse" since the party came to power.

Christina McAnea, who is running again to be leader of Unison, representing 1.3 million largely public-sector workers, told Byline Times: "People are really disappointed about what's happened since Labour came in, because there was a high expectation that they would come in and somehow life would get better. But if you look at what's happening to the cost of living, it's pretty much stagnated, or it's got worse."

She noted that housing, energy and food costs have "not stopped going up."

"People aren't feeling that anything that the Government has done has made their life better. You can understand why they'll turn to alternative parties that can make easy promises without actually having to deliver," McAnea said. "Until Labour can turn [the cost of living] around, they'll continue to look for an alternative."

However, voters would come up against the "reality that Reform doesn't have any answers."

"They get away with murder in the media…They don't seem to get much scrutiny or challenge. They're allowed to say whatever they like, and nobody challenges them. [They claim] 'we're going to save hundreds of thousands of pounds in local government in these 10 councils.' No, you're not. It's a total lie. You haven't saved anything," the union leader said.

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Critical Friend

McAnea is widely seen as being close to Keir Starmer, and her support for the Government has spurred an insurgent campaign against her by opponent Andrea Egan, a Bolton-based social worker.

But McAnea hit back at those claims in an interview with this outlet, saying: "I could go into meetings with Government ministers and come out and put out a press release saying, "This is shocking. We're not getting what we want," and it would please Andrea's faction, and it would probably get me a headline and get me in the news. Would it help the members? Probably not."

She said she was making headway with ministers, pushing hard for progressive changes, including in the Budget on November 26th.

"We've been pushing very hard for things like a 10% tax on the profits the banks make. We're pushing to see that they bring in a tax on people who have assets of more than £5 million…

"I'm not underestimating the difficulties facing [the Government]. Quite frankly, I'd hate to be Rachel Reeves at this point in time, but I would love to see them being a bit brave and bold."

Asked about rumours of a leadership challenge against Keir Starmer, she added: "Nobody's contacted me who wants to stand against Keir Starmer…If it's happening, I am not aware of it. I'm sure there's lots of machinations going on behind the scenes, but…nobody's coming to us about it."

The fundamental point for her, however, is this: "Divided parties don't win elections."

The Scottish trade unionist also expressed frustration with the Government not communicating some of the popular policies they are pushing through - such as the Employment Rights Bill, which is set to transform workers' rights in the UK and reverse a raft of anti-union laws.

"I think they need to perhaps have a proper communication strategy with it…It is a huge improvement on workers' rights."

EXCLUSIVE

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Jeffrey Epstein - long portrayed by the Republican right as part of a deep state liberal conspiracy - was providing strategic, financial and media support to the very heart of Trump's MAGA movement, working directly with Steve Bannon on political planning in Europe and US campaign messaging from 2018 to 2019. The payoff would be a movement that neutralised the #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment in the workplace.

For years, Bannon - the architect of MAGA, Trump's first campaign manager and former White House chief strategist - has used his War Room podcast to promote QAnon conspiracy theories about the Democrat Party as a cabal of child molesters.

He once described QAnon as "the elephant in the room"; had Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene on his show calling Democrats "the party of paedophiles"; and urged listeners to call their senators and oppose the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson by relaying "your unexpurgated opinion on what you think of Judge Jackson in this area of child torture, child rape, baby torture, and baby rape."

Yet the new emails released by the House Oversight Committee, reviewed by Byline Times reveal that in contrast, Steve Bannon had worked closely with Jeffrey Epstein, an American financier and convicted sex offender accused of operating a vast international sex trafficking ring involving underage girls.

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Epstein offered potential financial support to Bannon through opaque cryptocurrency schemes designed to evade regulatory scrutiny, along with extensive political networks, strategic planning and routes to European leaders - not to mention advice on pro-Trump video campaign materials.

In return, Bannon offered Epstein something irresistible: to build a right-wing MAGA coalition that would "stave off" the global movement against sexual harassment for more than a decade.

Earlier this year, Steve Bannon repeatedly claimed that the convicted child sex offender was operating as part of a deep state anti-Trump conspiracy. "In that arc of looking at how the deep state has tried to stop Trump and the MAGA movement, you can easily fit in," Bannon told a crowd at a Turning Point US conference in July.

"Epstein is a key that picks the lock on so many things," he said. "Not just individuals, but also institutions. Intelligence institutions, foreign governments, and who was working with him on our intelligence apparatus and in our government."

However, newly released emails now show Jeffrey Epstein acting as an intimate political fixer for Steve Bannon himself between 2018 and 2019.

Over this period, Epstein arranged access to world leaders for Bannon, proposing opaque crypto-based funding structures, drafting contact lists for the MAGA architect, and even offering the President of the UN General Assembly to guide Bannon's "EU project."

In return, Bannon fed Epstein ideological strategy, media plans and internal Republican thinking - at one point spelling out a right-wing coalition to "stave off Time's Up for next decade plus".

The correspondence also shows Epstein helping to shape Bannon's public image. In one message, he tells journalist Michael Wolff that if Republicans held the House in 2018, "Steve would deserve most of the credit", while Bannon privately reassured Epstein during renewed scrutiny that "there is a crazed jihad against u".

The emails reveal a political partnership across these two years in which MAGA's architect worked hand-in-hand with a convicted sex offender - contradicting everything Bannon has since claimed about Epstein and the so-called "cover-u...

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Keir Starmer is not a good Prime Minister. In the year and a half that he has been in Downing Street he has lost the trust of the public and his own party. A poor manager and an even poorer communicator, Starmer has proven to hold few of the political skills required to prosper in 21st century politics.

It is fair to say that many of his problems were not originally of his own making. For all the criticism of Starmer for endlessly blaming his predecessors, he did come into office with the worst inheritance of any Prime Minister in modern times. In every area from public services, to the public finances, it is hard to imagine a tougher set of circumstances for an incoming Government than that experienced by Starmer last year.

However, tough circumstances require tough leadership and so far the Prime Minister has shown himself incapable of delivering it. Indecisive and uncommunicative, Starmer has instead left Downing Street to be largely run by a group of competing aides operating out of their own fiefdoms, with little clear direction from above. The result has been a rapid turnover of senior staff and the sort of infighting that led to the botched briefings against Wes Streeting earlier this week.

Yet for all the talk of a potential challenge against Starmer in the coming months, the fact remains that the biggest problem facing this Labour Government is not just a lack of leadership, but a lack of ideas.

As today's Budget U-turn on income tax today demonstrates, the real problem is not just that the Government is incapable of communicating its ideas from the top, but that it doesn't really know what those ideas should be in the first place.

Is this a Government willing to take unpopular decisions for the greater good, as they claim, or a chaotic administration flittering endlessly from one unpopular alternative policy to the next at the slightest bit of pushback, as recent events suggest?

The fact that even they don't appear to know the answer to this question tells you that the real problem with this Government is not just the lack of an effective communicator in No 10, but a lack of any clear ideas to communicate.

And while much has already been written about potential replacements for Starmer, it's unclear that any of the available candidates have those ideas either.

The BBC's Attempts to Appease the 'Right-Wing Coup' Against It Are Now Seeding Its Own Destruction

By attempting to appease those forces seeking to destroy them, the BBC has helped trigger a crisis that now threatens its very future, argues Adam Bienkov

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At the front of the pack to succeed Starmer is the Health Secretary Wes Streeting. Streeting's chances have been boosted recently by a combination of his attempts to tack to the left and the recent bungled attacks on him by Starmer's Downing Street aides. As this week has shown, whatever his flaws, Streeting is a better communicator and a more skillful politician than Starmer.

However, a Streeting leadership still remains a longshot for the obvious reason that his politics remain a long way from the politics of the average Labour member, even allowing for the recent exodus of left-wing members to the Greens. As disliked by many Labour members as he is liked by much of the British press, Streeting would struggle to win any contest to replace Starmer. Faced with a choice between the Health Secretary and a generic soft left rival, most Labour members would likely opt for the latter.

However, even if Streeting could somehow succeed in becoming Labour leader and Prime Minister, it remains unclear whether he has any real sense of what he would do differently to the current incumbent of Downing Street. Like David Cameron, who said he wanted to become Prime Minister "because I think I'd be good at it" Streeting has not shown any ind...

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The head of Britain's trade union movement has called for a debate about the concentration of ownership of major UK media organisations, as he warned against allowing Trumpian attacks on the BBC to undermine our national broadcaster.

Trades Union Congress General Secretary Paul Nowak condemned media attacks on the BBC and said that GB News - the broadcast platform for much of the opposition to the publicly-funded corporation- is an "ideologically driven mouthpiece for those on the Right."

Speaking to Byline Times from TUC's Congress House in central London, Nowak said the "problems around media ownership and media bias have got worse" in his 36 years as a trade union activist.

He pointed to the growth of right-wing channel GB News, now promoted by Donald Trump and his team directly, and Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter (now X). The evidence shows a marked shift towards far-right figures on the platforms.

Nowak, 53, told this outlet: "When I was a young activist, we used to rail against Murdoch's monopoly of the media and the bias of the right-wing media, and that has remained [the case].

But he added: "Alongside that, now we've got social media companies owned wholesale by tech billionaires like X. Or [take] Paul Marshall who [owns] GB News and that whole empire.

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"I do think it is time for a debate about media plurality, and who owns our media."

He said the issue was "particularly important" amidst the concentration of social media ownership by a handful of tech barons.

"Who has control over the algorithms that dictate what content goes onto people's phones?"…We need to be effectively regulating those social media companies."

And while he highlighted some signs of unions reaching more people on platforms like TikTok, the union chief noted a stark fact: "Collectively, the trade union movement has [fewer] followers on X and Instagram than Nigel Farage on his own."

"We directly represent five and a half million people, so we've got to get much better at using those social media platforms and talking directly to members and potential members," the TUC head added.

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On the crisis in the BBC, the Merseyside-born leader argued that "anybody who cares about [a] decent press and media in this country should be rallying to defend the BBC and to strengthen it."

"Does that mean the organisation is perfect? No way at all. Would we have criticisms about some of its editorial decisions? Of course. Did they get it wrong on that Panorama programme [about Donald Trump]? Probably.

"But I think it is…the best news broadcaster in the world, and for all its imperfections, it's something we should absolutely defend - certainly defend it against the likes of Donald Trump."

He pointed his ire in particular at GB News, which is host to a raft of Reform UK politicians as presenters including Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson. The channel has faced a slew of investigtations over airing conspiracy theories, anti-migrant and homophobic slurs, and health misinformation.

Some on the Right would like GB News to eclipse the BBC. But Nowak said: "There is no comparison with GB News whatsoever. One is an ideologically driven mouthpiece for those on the Right, and the other is a genuine public service broadcaster. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but an institution that we have to defend."

EXCLUSIVE

The Pro-Trump Bias...

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A Reform councillor failed to declare a company he owned, triggering a formal complaint from a constituent.

Terry Mole (Reform UK, Ramsgate Division) was accused by a constituent of flouting the Localism Act, as he did not disclose his ownership of a delivery firm.

Cllr Terry Mole's register of interests - until a complaint was filed by a constituent - stated that he owns a company, but the name of the company was omitted.

It simply read: "Company owner - Debt Transfer Services". The Localism Act 2011 stipulates that councillors must accurately disclose their financial interests within 28 days of being elected.

However, Byline Times found that, rather than running a (nameless) 'debt transfer' company, it is actually a firm called DAT Transport Services Ltd - a delivery company operating in Kent.

When questioned by a constituent about the matter - before this outlet found the real nature of the firm - Cllr Mole replied suggesting they meet in-person, but refused to give the name of his company via email.

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Cllr Mole had said: "I would rather not pass personal information to someone unknown to me through the internet."

But constituent Carly told him: "Elected councillors are required to be transparent about their sources of income and assets they own. Your register of interests is still incomplete; it does not name the business you own."

Cllr Mole then allegedly stopped responding to her emails to follow up with the invitation.

The resident then requested Kent County Council instruct Cllr Mole to disclose the relevant details of the company he owns.

She asked the council's democratic services team to confirm whether or not Cllr Mole is breaking the law. After a month of failing to get answers, she filed a formal complaint to the council.

On November 11th, a council official told the constituent: "Further to your emails regarding Mr Mole's register of interests, I can confirm his employment has now been updated to include the name of the company for which he is director."

The constituent of Cllr Mole, Carly, said: "I find it very odd that Terry Mole went to these lengths to avoid revealing the name of his company. It's in the public interest for him to be transparent and tell us where his earnings come from, but he refused to talk about it when I contacted him directly, and didn't answer my follow-up email at all."

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"Why didn't Kent County Council check the submissions from their councillors? Why are some of them allowed to get away with highly evasive answers on their registers of interest?

"The public are sick of politicians that have vested interests, so we need all of them to honestly disclose how they (and their spouses) earn a living."

Speaking to Byline Times, a spokesperson for Kent County Council's democratic services team appeared to confirm there was no sanction for appearing to break the rules, saying: "I can confirm that, following receipt of relevant enquiries, Officers sought clarification from Mr Mole to check the details in the Register to ensure they were correct. Following this clarification, his Register of Interest has been updated accordingly."

Though the problem is not confined to Nigel Farage's party, it is the latest in a series of inaccuracies from Reform councillors, failing to provide the full picture of their financial interests.

As reported in our On the Ground column i...

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The leaked reports suggesting that the UK has suspended intelligence cooperation with the US over its lethal strikes against boats allegedly smuggling drugs through the Caribbean risks wider ramifications for UK-US intelligence cooperation, but only if the US chooses to overreact.

The UK's decision does not reflect any move to go "soft" on drugs, as some in the Trump administration might try to allege. Nor does it mean that the UK sympathizes with the Maduro regime in Venezuela, which many analysts believe is the true target of the US's more assertive posture in the region, part of a wider strategy to increase pressure on the regime and stimulate an internal coup against Maduro.

The UK has consistently stood with the US and other international partners in condemning Maduro's authoritarian rule in Venezuela, and denouncing his claim to the Presidency as illegitimate following contested elections last summer. Earlier this year, the UK imposed sanctions on 15 individuals closely associated with his regime.

The UK's decision seems to have been motivated purely by a concern that it not be directly implicated in the US's attacks, which numerous international experts, including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, have said is a form of extrajudicial killing, illegal under international law. There have been 19 attacks on boats so far, resulting in the deaths of at least 76 people. They have apparently taken place without any warnings to the people onboard, or with irrefutable proof that the boats were indeed carrying drugs, and destined for the US mainland.

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The UK could face legal jeopardy, because it has traditionally cooperated closely with US organisations combatting drug trafficking in the region, including by sharing intelligence, and stationing a liaison officer at the main centre for tracking drug movements and conducting counter-narcotic operations in the Caribbean, the Joint Interagency Task Force South unit in Key West, Florida.

The UK also has a naval officer onboard one of the US warships, the USS Winston Churchill, which is part of a larger naval strike force, including an aircraft carrier, which the US is moving into the region. This officer could potentially become personally liable, if he is on board a ship which takes part in illegal operations.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration tried to establish legal cover for its attacks by designating drug traffickers as "enemy combatants" engaged in an armed conflict against the US, and certain drug cartels as "foreign terrorist groups". While it is certainly true that drug-related deaths have soared in the US, and that drug gangs in Latin America are notoriously violent, their main destabilizing effects are felt in drug producing countries, such as Colombia, or transit countries, such as Mexico. There can be no credible claim that drug gangs pose such a serious security threat to the US, that it would justify a full-on military response

Moreover, the most serious drug problems in the US today are caused by synthetic drugs such as fentanyl, which are trafficked mainly through Mexico, and produced using chemicals sourced from China. According to Michael Shifter, former President of the Inter-American Dialogue, a leading Latin America think tank in Washington, whom I spoke to a few weeks ago about what might be behind US actions in the Caribbean, Venezuela, while certainly home to many criminal drug groups, is largely irrelevant to the fentanyl issue.

Shifter's believes that the US administration's decision to portray its military p...

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Reform UK in Kent looks set to drastically cut the number of committees scrutinising its work, Byline Times can reveal, amid claims it can't raise the numbers to do the work, following a wave of suspensions of its own own councillors.

Reform plans to bring a motion to the council in December - which opposition councillors say would cut back on scrutiny - to cut the number of committees holding it to account, following a wave of suspensions that means the administration is struggling to fill vacancies on important council bodies. Nine Reform councillors have been sacked by the party since being elected in May, severely weakening the party's majority.

One option is, Byline Times understands, to abolish cabinet committees entirely - which sense-check decisions of the Reform cabinet - and most scrutiny committees which are not legally-required.

Kent County Council operates a hybrid model with cabinet committees and overview/scrutiny committees which scrutinise decisions after they're made, as well as committees to look at big decisions before they're made. While they have to have an audit committee by law, cabinet committees aren't mandatory and could be in line for the chop.

The change would leave the council with (legally-required) bodies scrutinising governance and audit, standards, and regulatory and planning issues - while potentially abolishing committees for social care, environment and transport, children, young people and education, and growth, the economy, and communities.

A motion pushing for the changes will be put forward in December, the council confirmed to Byline Times. Labour group leader on Kent County Council Cllr Alister Brady argues this will reduce transparency, and shows Reform "are not fit to do the job - they want to reduce checks and balances."

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The party's recent suspensions have left a series of key posts unfilled.

Councillor Isabella Kemp, who was elected as a Reform councillor, was previously chair of the housing committee - but can't sit on it anymore since being sacked by her party last week amid internal infighting. She was also vice-chair of the fire authority, which has been thrown into chaos by the latest raft of suspensions by Reform on the council, under leader Linden Kemkaran.

Labour Cllr Brady told this outlet: "Reform are either afraid of hard work, or don't have the time to do the job properly. As a result, they're trying to change the system so they don't have to work as hard. With only 48 Reform councillors now, they're finding it hard to find chairs for committees."

"The proposed changes will make it harder for Kent residents to find out what they are doing - it will be a return to the 1980's where decisions were being made behind closed doors in smoke filled rooms."

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Cllr Mark Hood, the leader of the Green group at Kent County Council, said Reform will "carry out a review of the number of committees, the number of people who serve on committees, and the frequency that committee meetings are held at the county council."

"Committees [are] there to oversee the behaviour of the administration, and they are the tools that ordinary Kent residents rely on to ensure adequate scrutiny and transparency about the way Reform UK are running the council."

"Reform UK are telling us they've got an overwhelming mandate to do as they please…The reality is they only won 37...

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Keir Starmer's much-vaunted post-Brexit "reset" with the European Union has so far resulted in few concrete improvements to the UK's relations with its EU partners, according to a new parliamentary report.

The report, Unfinished Business, by the House of Lords European Affairs Committee, welcomes the first UK EU summit last May, the defence agreement with the EU and separate deals with France and Germany, as steps in the right direction.

But detailed examination of the promises made at the summit have so far seen little or no progress in implementing these changes.

At the time Sir Keir Starmer said the new deal would mean "more benefits for the United Kingdom as the result of a strengthened partnership with the European Union. It will be good for our jobs, good for our bills and good for our borders."

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The leaked memo that fuelled Trump's attack on the BBC was written by a lobbyist at a firm paid by US tech giants tied to the President

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Crossbench peer, Lord Ricketts, chair of the Lords European Affairs Committee, said: "The Government has made a strong start in resetting the UK's relationship with the EU. But there is still much to be done to turn aspirations into workable agreements of benefit to Britain's security and economic growth.

"The May 2025 UK-EU summit was the first major milestone setting out an ambitious direction of travel. We welcome the Security and Defence Partnership at a time of growing threats to European security. It will now be crucial that the negotiations under way on UK participation in the EU's defence investment programme (SAFE) provide clear strategic benefits for the UK's defence industry.

"The May summit also set the objective of a Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) agreement, to reduce checks on trade in animal and plant products, and a link between the UK and EU Emissions Trading Schemes. But there is a lack of clarity on how these schemes will work, when they will be achieved and the arrangements for parliamentary scrutiny of their impact on the UK economy."

Some areas such as moves to increase co-operation in law enforcement between the UK and the EU, proposals to make it easier for musicians and artists to tour the EU, and a new agreement to recognise mutual professional qualifications, appear to have stalled altogether.

Peers who met the European Commission and Parliament in Brussels could not confirm whether blockages on these measures were coming from the EU or the UK due to teh sparse information made available by ministers about what is happening.

Negotiations are continuing on a new limited Youth Experience programme, encouraging young people from both the UK and the EU to live, work and study in each other's countries, and on bringing the UK back into the Erasmus programme, which would allow UK students to study in EU universities. This stopped after Brexit but little is known about the progress.

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Peers are critical of the failure of the Government to enable Parliamentary scrutiny of progress in negotiations. They say the Government should have produced a White Paper outlining the objectives at the time of the summit as "this would have facilitated our task of holding the Government to account."

They were also highly critical of the one concrete change already agreed with the EU following the summit - the 1...

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Michael Prescott's memo, accusing the BBC of systemic bias, has been incorrectly described by The Telegraph as an "internal" memo. However, this is inaccurate. The document was never commissioned by the BBC, but was authored by Prescott unsolicited and sent to the BBC after Prescott finished his stint as an advisor to the media company.

Among the outside organisations he cited for proof of bias within the BBC, presented as independent expert bodies, were History Reclaimed and UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI). Yet both organisations are deeply embedded in the political culture wars that have defined the Anglo-American populist right.

History Reclaimed and Lawyers for Israel

History Reclaimed describes itself as "an independent group of scholars" defending history from "political manipulation." Its founders include Cambridge historian Robert Tombs, who served on Boris Johnson's Heritage Advisory Board, and historian David Abulafia, chair of Historians for Britain, both long-standing advocates of Brexit and advisers to Conservative causes.

Among its senior advisers are Nigel Biggar, now a Conservative life peer in the House of Lords, and Zewditu Gebreyohanes, a Johnson-appointed trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum and former director of Restore Trust, a campaign targeting the National Trust's work on colonialism and slavery.

Several of History Reclaimed's contributors are openly aligned with the American and European 'new right'. Portland State academic Bruce Gilley, whose article "The Case for Colonialism" defended Western imperialism, has publicly endorsed Donald Trump and published essays celebrating "MAGA imperialism." Fellow adviser Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, has argued that Trump "is not a threat to democracy."

EXCLUSIVE

'BBC Bias' Memo Was Authored by Lobbyist Tied to Pro-Trump Tech Giants

The leaked memo that fuelled Trump's attack on the BBC was written by a lobbyist at a firm paid by US tech giants tied to the President

Nafeez Ahmed

That constellation places History Reclaimed within the same ideological universe as GB News and its US counterparts: a populist movement that recasts culture and scholarship as political battlegrounds. Prescott's decision to treat its work as objective evidence of BBC bias reveals more about his sympathies than about the broadcaster's journalism.

Another contributor is James Orr - senior advisor to Nigel Farage, and the "British Sherpa" of Trump's Vice President JD Vance.

If History Reclaimed embodies the culture-war flank of the campaign against the BBC, UK Lawyers for Israel provides its legal one. The group makes no pretence of neutrality, describing itself as "an association of lawyers who support Israel using their legal skills", and vehemently criticising the International Criminal Court's investigations of alleged war crimes in Gaza, and fundamentally opposing the International Court of Justice genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel.

Its directors include Jonathan D. C. Turner and Caroline Turner, who have threatened hospitals and arts venues with legal action over displays deemed sympathetic to Palestinians.

Among its patrons are former Conservative leader Lord Howard of Lympne KC and crossbench peers Lord Pannick and Lord Carlile, though the latter resigned after UKLFI sought to challenge the Government over arms-licence suspensions.

UK regulators are now examining UKLFI's conduct: the Solicitors Regulation Authority has opened an inquiry following complaints of intimidatory tactics.

The fact that Prescott presents these as evidence against BBC impartiality reveals the political bias at the root of his memo.

What the BBC Got Right About Trump and 6 January

For all the outrage generated by the leaked memo, the core question is simple: did the BBC misrepresent Donald Trump's r...

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The author of the leaked 'BBC bias' memo, seized on by President Donald Trump to threaten a billion-dollar lawsuit against the broadcaster, is a right-wing lobbyist whose firm is being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by US tech and media giants with close ties to Trump, to whom they have donated millions.

One of them, Oracle, is owned by a Republican Party mega-donor who in November 2020 spoke with Trump aides about delegitimising the US elections - and who is actively seeking to reshape the US media landscape to benefit the President.

The lobbyist, Michael Prescott, was reportedly appointed to the BBC advisory position under the influence of BBC Board member Sir Robbie Gibb, a co-founder and early fundraiser of the pro-Trump TV news station GB News co-owned by hedge fund multimillionaire Paul Marshall. Earlier this year, Marshall called for the BBC to be dismantled.

The revelations raise questions about whether a network of Trump-aligned interests helped engineer the BBC's worst governance crisis in a decade.

Crisis or Coup?

When President Donald Trump threatened to sue the BBC for a billion dollars over its recent Panorama documentary, he accused the corporation of "malicious defamation" for editing parts of his address on 6 January 2021, the day his supporters stormed the US Capitol.

The row was triggered by The Telegraph's publication of a 39-page leaked 'memo', alleging that the Panorama edit exemplified "progressive bias" across the BBC's output.

Under intensifying political pressure, BBC chair Samir Shah apologised for what he called an "error of judgment," shortly after director-general Tim Davie and BBC News chief Deborah Turness resigned in the ensuing crisis.

But the man behind the memo is far from a neutral auditor. Michael Prescott is a right-wing lobbyist working as a managing director for nearly a decade at Hanover Communications, a firm with longstanding Conservative Party ties.

Byline Times can reveal that Hanover Communications has been paid at least half a million dollars by four American media and technology corporations whose founders and executives are closely tied to Donald Trump.

According to official EU and UK lobbying disclosures seen by Byline Times, Prescott's firm represents Oracle, Apple, Meta and Paramount - a roster that spans the core of Big Tech, US entertainment and news media. The latest filings show payments in the six-figure range for the last financial year, covering both regulatory lobbying in Brussels and political communications in Westminster.

The new evidence suggests that Prescott's memo lends weight to the concerns of BBC insiders that its use was choreographed as part of a wider attack on the corporation by forces aligned with the US President.

EXCLUSIVE

The Pro-Trump Bias of the 'Neutral' Sources in the Leaked BBC 'Prescott Dossier'

Byline Times' analysis of key sources in the memo about the BBC's alleged 'progressive bias' shows it relied on highly partisan right-wing, Trump-aligned organisations

Nafeez Ahmed

Oracle and the Emerging Pro-Trump Media Empire

Michael Prescott, author of the BBC memo, has been managing director of Hanover Communications, a major British lobbying firm, since 2017.

Leading the list of American tech giants for which Hanover is lobbying is Oracle, whose billionaire founder Larry Ellison - a major Trump ally and Republican Party megadonor - is spearheading a conservative-leaning US media empire, including being in pole position for the purchase of the US version of TikTok.

On 14 November 2020, the Washington Post reported, Ellison joined a strategy call with Trump aides aimed at overturning the legitimate result of the 2020 US national elections. This was less than a week after Trump experienced stunning defeats in Republican strongholds Arizona and Georgia.

Oracle's EU filings disclose $1...