Rolling coverage of the day’s political events as they happen 10.34am GMT
Andy McDonald, the shadow transport secretary, has also given an interview to the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire. In it, he partly toned down his criticism of the BBC. He said that he was not blaming it for Labour’s defeat. And he said that he treasured it. But he repeated his claim that some its coverage was slanted against Labour. He said:
I’m suggesting that we treasure our public service broadcaster, the BBC, and in my opinion they have trespassed with regularity during the course of this campaign into an area that they should not trespass into.
We’ve had endless examples from the political correspondents of the
BBC that we find very difficult to accept.
Well, when your senior political correspondent opines about the postal ballots, and says that the postal ballots are not looking good for
Labour – we don’t look at postal ballots – how on earth could that opinion be expressed? And why is an interpretation on what is blind at that time being interpreted as not looking good for Labour?
Why is it that stories sent from Tory HQ are received by the BBC and turned into a factual story when the reality is that the Labour political activist did not punch a political adviser to Matt Hancock? Yet that was put out on the airwaves.
In my view [the BBC has] been used and abused, and if we are not careful the rampant Tory party will dispense with the BBC, and sadly those who are currently in charge of it have nobody to blame for themselves.
But I treasure the BBC. It’s a bastion. And it’s really, really important that we hold our public service broadcaster close and make sure that it is not undermined. I’m afraid the way people have gone about their business during this
election does not fill me with confidence. 10.17am GMT
The Labour MP Jonathan Reynolds has criticised his colleague Andy McDonald for part-blaming the BBC for their party’s defeat. (See 9.48am.)The media can be frustrating, and some of the tabloids at times just embarrassing, but blaming them for last Thursday is an abdication of responsibilityThere are definitely some journalists where you feel they have no interest in providing scrutiny or insight to the viewer, and just want a viral clip to boost their own profile. But the Tories face that too.In some policy areas we actually got a pretty easy ride from the media https://t.co/fJuc8nUHXG