GB News

Background

GB News is a UK-based TV and radio outlet founded in June 2021. It operates a range of news and opinion programmes and claims to “not shy away from controversial issues”.¹

The outlet has provided a platform to climate science denial groups, including CAR26 and the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Libertarian groups have also been given a regular platform, with the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) stating in its 2021/22 annual report that the launch of GB News “has increased opportunities for IEA commentary, direct to the public”.²

GB News chairman Alan McCormick has a history of sharing articles that dismiss the threat of climate change.³

Former BBC presenter Andrew Neil was the chairman of GB News and a director of All Perspectives Limited – the parent company of GB News – from January to September 2021.⁴

On resigning from his roles, Neil claimed that he held differences of opinion with GB News executives and that “the direction they were going in was not the direction that I had outlined, it was not the direction I had envisaged for the channel”.⁵

When pressed on whether he had left GB News because it had become too right-wing, Neil said that “people should make up their own minds on that”.⁶

A number of Conservative MPs have worked as presenters on GB News, including: Esther McVey,⁷ Philip Davies,⁸ Jacob Rees-Mogg,⁹ Lee Anderson¹⁰ and Dehenna Davison.¹¹ In February 2024, the Guardian reported that the channel had paid Conservative MPs “more than £660,000 in appearance fees and salaries since it launched” versus £1,100 for Labour MPs, “amid growing concerns among centrists about the channel’s sway over the Tory party’s direction”.¹²

Conservative peers Lord Michael Farmer and Lord Michael Spencer have held shares in All Perspectives Limited, while Baroness Helena Morrisey is a director of the firm.¹³

Other GB News presenters include former Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, former executive editor of the Sun newspaper Dan Wootton, former Guido Fawkes senior reporter Tom Harwood, former Brexit Party parliamentary candidates Michelle Dewberry and Calvin Robinson, and TV historian Neil Oliver.¹⁴

Stance on Climate Change

October 10, 2022

Covering a Just Stop Oil protest outside Buckingham Palace, GB News producer Ben Leo asked the protestors a series of questions couched on climate science denial, including: “Why was there a warming period in the Roman times over a couple of hundred years? It was exceptionally warm and then it got cold.”¹⁵

Producers also overlaid screenshots from non-peer reviewed studies claiming that the “Roman period was 2°C warmer than today” and a screenshot of CLINTEL’s World Climate Declaration, which claimed “There is no climate emergency”.

June 8, 2022

Speaking to the BBC’s Media Show, GB News CEO Angelos Frangopoulos said that “When it comes to climate change, there is contention, and we do have multiple sides of the climate debate.”¹⁶

Funding

GB News is funded by private investors. It received an initial £60 million in funding from the American multimedia channel Discovery, British investor Sir Paul Marshall, and the United Arab Emirates-based private investment firm Legatum, which founded the Legatum Institute think tank.¹⁷ The Legatum Institute has previously received donations from a foundation linked to the US-based Koch Industries fossil fuel dynasty.¹⁸

A further £60 million in investment was announced in August 2022, with Legatum and Sir Paul Marshall buying the stake previously held by Discovery.¹⁹

GB News made a loss of more than £30 million during its first year on air.²⁰

A DeSmog investigation revealed that Paul Marshall’s hedgefund, Marshall Wace, holds at least $2.2bn in fossil fuel investments in 2023.²¹

Key People

Nigel Farage – Presenter.
Jacob Rees-Mogg – Presenter.
Esther McVey – Presenter.
Philip Davies – Presenter.
Lee Anderson – Presenter.
Tom Harwood – Presenter.
Dan Wootton – Former Presenter.
Calvin Robinson – Presenter.
Mark Dolan – Presenter.
Neil Oliver – Presenter.
Nana Akua – Presenter.
Eamonn Holmes – Presenter.
Gloria De Piero – Presenter.
Andrew Doyle – Presenter.

Actions

March 18, 2024

The UK’s broadcast regulator, Ofcom, found that GB News had breached impartiality rules by allowing Conservative MPs to serve as news presenters but will face no sanctions for the breach.²²

March 30, 2023

During a segment on net zero, GB News hosted Harry Wilkinson, head of policy at the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), one of the UK’s leading climate science denial groups, as well as the GWPF’s campaign arm, Net Zero Watch (NZW). Wilkinson criticised the government’s policy of boosting sales of heat pumps as “absurd” and said that gas boilers “remain the cheapest option.”²³

March 21, 2023

GB News journalists Ben Chapman and Joe Kasper cited climate science denier Ben Pile in an article titled “ULEZ: Sadiq Khan’s claim of 4,000 deaths a year due to pollution deemed ‘misleading’”.²⁴

The article, which identified Pile as a “climate change researcher”, was based on a report by Pile’s climate science denial group Climate Debate which challenged findings from the Environmental Research Group at Imperial College London that presented a link between long-term exposure to air pollution and premature deaths.

February 7, 2023

In a news bulletin, GB News host Nigel Farage claimed that energy security and net zero were “completely and utterly incompatible”, adding that to meet net zero the UK would have to “produce none of our own energy and get rid of pretty much every manufacturing job in the country”.²⁵

December 10, 2022

Host Neil Oliver asserted that “the polar bears are doing fine” and “the ice in Antarctica is getting thicker every day”.²⁶

December 9, 2022

Host Mark Dolan praised plans to open a new coal mine in Cumbria, saying the UK should “drill, baby, drill” for coal, oil and gas, and adding: “I think the push for net zero here is another element of liberal progressivism which is infecting the west.”²⁷

December 6, 2022

GB News host and Reclaim Party leader Laurence Fox argued for scrapping “those woke billions” that “we are spending each year to appease the sun monster with offerings of net zero”.²⁸

November 21, 2022

On a broadcast of Bev Turner Today, Turner said that loss and damage agreements made at COP27 amounted to an attempt by “this government, [who] were parachuted in after the globalist coup of 10 Downing Street” to “[make] us poorer.”²⁹

November 5, 2022

Neil Oliver used his show to attack “net zero [and] the green agenda”, which he claimed was part of “a hellish potpourri of policies guaranteed to condemn hundreds of millions to death by poverty, death by starvation”.³⁰

October 5, 2022

Host Laurence Fox asked with regard to net zero policies, “is it time to actually scrap net zero, once and for all?,” adding that “it smacks of an unhealthy coupling of unchallengeable ideology combined with reams of expensive bureaucracy, all to achieve literally zero”.³¹

In the same segment Fox argued in support of fossil fuels, “the future is right beneath our feet; decades of it”, adding: “don’t scrap fossil fuels when we need them most. Otherwise the only thing that will be at net zero this winter will be the thermometer in your living room.”

September 22, 2022

In an episode of Mark Dolan Tonight, Dolan said: “Blindly pursuing net zero threatens to hasten the decline of the west, and therefore poses an existential threat to the free world.”³²

August 30, 2022

In an appearance on GB News discussing the possibility of pubs raising their prices due to rising energy bills, Lois Perry, Director of CAR26, which GB News call a “climate sceptic campaign group”, argued:³³

“…the customers need to know this is nothing to do with the war in Ukraine, this is nothing to do with anything apart from their own government’s net-stupid policies. As long as they realise that, then that’s the main thing; this is nothing to do with anything else.”

Replying to GB News host Mark Steyn, who suggested that incoming Prime Minister Liz Truss should “say now: net zero is bonkers when you’re talking about £15 a pint for beer”, Perry continued:

“I was with Lord [David] Frost today and I actually put the question to him, you know, when you’ve got 70 percent of Tory voters that want a pause and review, at least, of net zero, what on earth is Liz Truss thinking potentially putting Kwasi Kwarteng in as chancellor? I mean, he’s a net-zero fanatic […] we really need Liz Truss to scrap net zero don’t we. But the Kwasi Kwarteng thing, it does worry me because he’s a fanatic, he’s surrounded by fanatics as well.”

Perry added: “Lord Frost is not really into the net zero thing at all, at all, but you know, he has to be careful what he says.”³⁴

August 24, 2022

In an interview with Nigel Farage on a GB News segment titled “For Frack’s Sake”, CAR26’s Director Lois Perry said: “call me old fashioned, but I thought the Labour Party was supposed to care about working people and you know, God forbid, poor people, and they’re the people who are going to be hit by this.”³⁵

Perry also said she had “heard through the grapevine” that “an equivalent of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group but on the Labour side has been formed”.

She added: “If you haven’t got fracking, where are the highly qualified working class jobs? But we don’t really care about them any more do we?”

Perry concluded: “If the Tories don’t sort themselves out and get fracking as soon as possible, this is an open goal for Labour, it really is.”

August 19, 2022

In his regular “Dan Wootton tonight” segment, GB News host Dan Wootton said:

“It just makes me so angry, that for the past few years, the government has been beholden to the craven green lobby, and that odd little teenage Greta Thunberg who should have stayed at school instead of helping to create a ludicrous situation where the West has become dependent on Russia for our energy […] Other than the completely mad extremists like [Extinction Rebellion] and Insulate Britain, there is now wide acceptance that the UK must become energy independent.

“In 2022, the cost of living crisis trumps the so-called climate emergency which will be tackled over the next two decades with new technology and gradual change that doesn’t cripple our economy. Sadly the mistakes made by giving into the green lobby mean the financial pain in the short term is likely to be catastrophic actually, especially for the families and businesses hit hard by two years of unnecessary lockdowns.”

Wootton continued: “In the medium term, the government must expand North Sea oil and gas to replace foreign imports. And as I said last night, frack, frack, frack, without any delay”, before adding: “Do you know, much of the anti-fracking nonsense has been propagated by the Russian government for reasons now abundantly obvious, as Matt Ridley has reported?”³⁶

On the same day, DeSmog reported that the claim Russia had supported anti-fracking protestors stemmed from an unsubstantiated remark in 2014 by the then NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.³⁷

August 18, 2022

GB News invited CAR26 Director Lois Perry to share her views with host Mark Steyn in a segment titled: “Is the narrative changing when it come [sic] to net zero?”.³⁸

When asked by Steyn “why are we even bothering with net zero?” Perry replied: “well, we shouldn’t be”.

She continued:

“Nobody wants it. The times, the mood, has changed. There is a zeitgeist […] people are questioning the science now and they are seeing that it is really dodgy actually, a lot of it, and people aren’t prepared to pay for it.”

Perry later added:

“We can be fracking in 12 months, we can be, 12 to 18 months. I don’t want to go on just about fracking, we’ve got lots of other things that we could be doing. There is coal, there is North Sea oil, there’s all sorts of other things we could be doing.”

July 28, 2022

In an interview with CAR26 Director Lois Perry, GB News presenter Mark Steyn argued that “it’s actually hard to find a candidate to get behind [in the Conservative Party leadership race] who isn’t insanely wedded to this net-zero”.³⁹

Perry agreed, saying: “you’re absolutely right, but I think with Liz Truss, she is giving signals that on the surface she has to pay lip service to certain things to do with the climate agenda, but the thing is, she […] wants to frack, which is fantastic”.

July 21, 2022

Host Bev Turner called heatwave warnings “fear mongering” by the government with the goal to “facilitate state control over your life”.⁴⁰

Turner also told viewers to “be aware of green issue propaganda which will serve large corporate interests”, which is “part of a plan to register us all to a Biometric ID and a social credit score system that’ll tell you when you can and can’t leave the house for the sake of the planet”.

July 19, 2022

In a GB News interview with Nigel Farage during the UK’s record-breaking heatwave, CAR26’s Lois Perry argued:⁴¹

“Of course, those temperature records only started 120 years ago and there is a huge span of history, including [the] Roman warming period, mediaeval warming period, which were much hotter. They were growing grapes and making wine in Manchester. There is a huge amount of scientific evidence that you don’t ever hear because people are no-platformed, they’re sacked from their jobs, they’re just not funded.”

Perry continued:

“The whole net zero thing is about – well, I believe – is about control. It’s about controlling how much we travel, […] whether we can go out, leave the house. We’ve had covid lockdowns, now we’re looking at, in the last couple of days the whole concept of a climate lockdown, i.e. it’s too hot to go out. There is a huge amount of vested interest, people are making money, […] ESG, all of the different financial instruments that have been put in place.”

Perry added that she doesn’t “believe [cutting carbon emissions] has any impact on the environment whatsoever” and concluded:

“There weren’t many cars in the Roman period when it was a lot hotter and we know that for a fact, and there weren’t many cars and there weren’t many coal-powered fire stations in the mediaeval period, in the Roman period. […] Dr, I think it’s, Otto Weiss, has been talking about cyclical solar patterns which show that it’s absolutely nothing to do with CO2 whatsoever. The thing is, I should be allowed to think that, and it should be allowed to be debated. And physicists and scientists that believe that should be allowed to go on platforms. […] The other scientists’ arguments would be absolutely torn apart by anyone who has not been paid off to say this absolute nonsense.”

When asked by GB News presenter Nigel Farage what the government should do with its net zero targets, Perry replied: “They should scrap them, they’re ridiculous and they’re actually human hating.”

During the interview, Perry also called for a referendum on net zero.⁴²

July 17, 2022

Host Darren Grimes claimed that net zero is “an asphyxiating straitjacket bound around the body of Britain” that is being imposed by Conservative politicians who “aren’t being honest with you on the trade-off required thanks to this legally-binding policy of green extremes”.⁴³

Grimes claimed that net zero plans were part of a conspiracy in which “technocrats” are in “discussions around how to immiserate those much poorer than them”.

July 16, 2022

During the UK’s record-breaking summer heatwave, host Calvin Robinson accused the Met Office of “alarmism”, adding: “Man-made climate change, I don’t buy it, because how much of an impact do we really make if we’re talking about carbon levels?”⁴⁴

July 16, 2022

Host Nana Akua claimed that net zero was “a money-spinning, extreme and impossible goal” that “only relates to the zero sum you will have in your bank account by the time they’re done with you”.⁴⁵

May 18, 2022

Host Mark Steyn claimed on an episode of “The Steyn Line” that climate policy was part of a conspiracy to bring about “a controlled demolition of the western world” by “sinister globalist[s]”.⁴⁶

May 2, 2022

In a GB News article titled “Wind farms earn hundreds of millions more from energy crisis after delaying Government subsidy contract”, Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay, chair of the parliamentary Net Zero Scrutiny Group, referred to the UK’s net zero policies as “the net zero con-trick”. He also criticised “the false promise of cheap renewable energy”.⁴⁷

May 2, 2022

GB News published an “exclusive” story criticising government subsidies for wind farms that was based entirely on an analysis by Net Zero Watch, a group operating as the campaigning arm of UK’s leading climate science denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).⁴⁸

April 26, 2022

In response to a contributor arguing that net zero policies have received support from both Labour and Conservative voters, after a poll found that the Conservatives may lose 1.3 million voters if net zero targets aren’t met, GB News presenter Nigel Farage suggested it was because “they don’t know the racket, do they, they don’t know what they’ve been charged”.⁴⁹

October 21, 2021

In an episode of “On the Money”, host Liam Halligan criticised net zero and COP26 plans, saying “during this Glasgow COP26 corporate jolly they will sign all of us up to even more ambitious decarbonisation targets”.⁵⁰

He also used the segment to ask “will ordinary workers pay?” for “this COP26 agenda”, having earlier claimed that “much of the [economic] burden of that change will be shouldered by ordinary people”.

October 11, 2021

In an interview with Conservative MP Steve Baker, Tom Harwood voiced support for fracking in the UK, saying: “why on earth has the government abandoned the drive for shale gas which could be a very good transition fuel in this country?”⁵¹

In the same segment Harwood erroneously claimed that, by using shale gas, the US had met its Paris commitments whilst withdrawing from the Paris treaty.

August 31, 2021

In an appearance on a GB News segment titled “How far should we go to tackle Climate Change?”, Nigel Farage said to fellow presenter Alex Phillips:⁵²

“I’m very much an environmentalist Alex, I have been for 40 years […] I’m all for sensible environmentalism, I can’t abide things like plastics in our seas, pollution in our rivers and I want things done about it and I’m pleased to say that in some cases things have been done. Certainly our rivers are much much better than they were 20, 40 years ago. What annoys me though, is this complete obsession with carbon dioxide almost to the exclusion of everything else, the alarmism that comes with it, based on dodgy predictions and science, and somehow this, ‘If you don’t agree with us that CO2 is the great evil, you’re against the planet and you’re a denier’. I mean it’s complete and utter rubbish. Does man have an impact on the world? Well, with a global population of now seven and a half billion compared to two and a half billion when I was born, of course man has an impact. But it’s not just man, and what man does that changes climate or the world: it’s volcanic activity, it’s sun spots, it’s so many other things. So look, I want us to have proper, sensible environmental policies but I think this focus on CO2, and this commitment to effectively tax poor people, to give money to rich people and big corporations whilst China’s gonna ignore it all, is gonna leave us in a very uncompetitive position and it’s very unfair on ordinary people.”

August 7, 2021
On a “Saturday Morning UK” debate, Conservative MP and GB News host Esther McVey said that the country should not be “bankrupt” over climate action, continuing: “we don’t go green and go red as a country at the same time”. In response to another guest’s suggestion that not acting on climate change would cost more in the long run, McVey responded “why do you have to go to extremes?”⁵³