Musical chairs at BBC News: who will replace Laura Kuenssberg?
(Alamy)
Big changes are coming at BBC News. Huw Edwards has been talking of leaving the BBC’s flagship news programme. Jon Sopel is leaving as the BBC’s North America editor, a job he’s held since 2014, and for the past couple of weeks there has been considerable speculation about whether Laura Kuenssberg will be leaving as the BBC ‘s Political Editor, a position she’s held since she succeeded Nick Robinson in July 2015. Finally, John Simpson, the BBCs World Affairs Editor, and a BBC reporter since 1970, is surely due to retire soon as he approaches eighty. Lyse Doucet and Jeremy Bowen, both mainstays of the BBC’s Middle East coverage, are both in their sixties and may also be leaving soon.
These are all big jobs and a round of musical chairs will follow. There has been talk of Kuenssberg and/or Sopel moving to the Today programme and of Amol Rajan moving from Today to take over from Kuenssberg.
In recent years the BBC has a predictably bad record in making these high-profile changes. David Dimbleby was a superb presenter of Question Time and of the BBC’s election coverage. Fiona Bruce and Huw Edwards have so far proved less than ideal replacements. Newsnight has still not found a suitable substitute for Jeremy Paxman, and he left as long ago as 2014. The BBC have failed to find a political interviewer or presenter as impressive as Andrew Neil.
Of course, they were big shoes to fill. Dimbleby reported on his first General Election in 1964, Paxman joined the BBC in 1972 and started presenting Newsnight in 1989, while Andrew Neil had presented a number of BBC programmes over almost twenty years, including Sunday Politics and This Week on BBC One and Daily Politics , Politics Live and The Andrew Neil Show on BBC Two, as well as Budget Specials and taking part in General Election coverage.
There are two main problems with replacing some of these figures. First, the days of the famous white male middle-aged reporters, and especially presenters, are coming to an end at the BBC. In today’s BBC they will be keen to find female and/or non-white replacements in at least some of these jobs. It is no coincidence that in recent years Laura Kuenssberg was the first female political editor of the BBC, Fiona Bruce is the first female presenter of Question Time after long stints by Robin Day and David Dimbleby, while Clive Myrie has just replaced John Humphrys as presenter of Mastermind after four white male presenters. Newsnight’s most high-profile presenters are now both women: Kirsty Wark, who has presented the programme since 1993, and Emily Maitlis.
Perhaps this is one reason why Amol Rajan is being so hotly tipped as the BBC’s new political editor. If he were to be appointed, he would be the first political editor of Asian origin. His CV is impressive. Former editor of The Independent, he’s been the BBC’s Media Editor since December 2016 and recently joined the Today programme. He’s young (only 38), high-energy, funny, and the media beat has changed enormously during his time, with scandals at the BBC (no news there), but also more important the rise of Twitter, Amazon and Google as major news stories.
The other huge change in these high-profile news jobs is the job description. The Political Editor is expected to be available early in the morning for the Today programme and still reporting on the big political news story of the day for The Ten O’Clock News, while breaking stories in between. This is a gruelling schedule and Laura Kuenssberg has done a terrific job of keeping on top of it, always bright, articulate and supremely competent, despite allegations of bias from Left and Right.
Jon Sopel has a similarly gruelling schedule as the BBC’s North America editor, but he’s been helped by a fine team of reporters and presenters, including Christian Fraser, Anthony Zurcher and until recently Katty Kay and Nick Bryant. These are hugely demanding jobs and talented reporters may not be queuing up to replace Ms Kuenssberg, just as not everyone will want to be getting up at 4 am on a regular basis to present the Today programme.
Among the favourites to replace Laura Kuenssberg are Vicki Young (Deputy Political Editor and tipped by Andrew Marr), James Landale (white, male and old Etonian, therefore unlikely), Beth Rigby from Sky News (high profile but blotted her copy book with that drinks outing during Covid and not as bright as the other candidates), Amol Rajan and Chris Mason.
Mason and Rajan should be the hot favourites, despite both being men. They both have lots of personality, they are the youngest in the field, 41 and 38 respectively, and though Mason is a white male he grew up in Yorkshire. This might matter at the BBC at a time when pro-Brexit northerners are increasingly disenchanted with the metropolitan BBC’s southern wokishness. Mason is also a product of the BBC: he first reported from Westminster in 2004, became a political correspondent for BBC News in 2012 and has presented Any Questions since 2019. He is not as feisty as Amol Rajan, and doesn’t have the latter’s intellectual range, but he’s more of a political animal, with a twinkle in his eye which the others lack.
One interesting suggestion from Michael Crick, a veteran from Newsnight and more recently Channel 4 News, has been to split the job of Political Editor between radio and TV. Crick argues that it’s just too big a job today for one person to handle and that it might also create more diversity within BBC News, which would be no bad thing. The only thing which is certain is that there will be lots of changes at BBC News. It is all but certain that the BBC hierarchy will make the wrong decision.
