Red meat

A long read in the New Statesman reveals that it was Robbie Gibb who got Andrew Neil into GB News; that Alex Phillips is paid £140k; that Gill Penlington was (probably) fired; and that Frangopoulos has got issues. 

It wasn’t until New Year’s Eve, nearly five months after Neil had been courted in France, that financing was in place, with US media conglomerate Discovery, Inc and UAE-based investment firm Legatum as co-leads; British hedge-fund manager Paul Marshall, a Brexit backer and the founder of online magazine UnHerd, invested in a personal capacity. Neil signed his contract. Four months later, in April 2021, the regulatory hurdles were cleared and the money was released.

It was only then that Neil suspected he might have made a mistake. On Zoom meetings that spring, Cole and Schneider suggested segments such as “The Guilty Men of Brexit”, in which GB News would pass sentence on Remainers such as the former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg or the philosopher AC Grayling. Neil couldn’t understand it: the Brexiteers had won! Why rake up the most miserable period of British politics he could remember? In another meeting, Cole and Schneider suggested a “BBC monitoring unit” and a nightly show that would expose the broadcaster. To Neil, it seemed they were on a right-wing crusade: that’s what they wanted the channel for.