THE BBC is being rivalled by GB News as a news source for Conservative activists, according to a new survey.
More than half of Conservative members say they regularly watch the right-leaning network, far outstripping ITN and Sky News as sources of news for the Tory grassroots.
The survey was conducted for the Conservative Home website with 61% of Tory members saying they regularly watch the BBC followed by 57% saying they watch GB News, a poll of 631 members found.
The survey highlights the pressure on Rishi Sunak (below) to move to the right on certain issues including asylum and tax.
Sky News was a distant third on 31 per cent, followed by ITN on 19 per cent while Channel 4 and TalkTV received 10% each.
A number of Tory MPs work as presenters for GB News including Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg and deputy party chair Lee Anderson.
Former prime minister Boris Johnson is due to begin hosting a new show on the channel later this year.
The channel has attracted a lot of criticism, including for its coverage on the safety of Covid-19 vaccines while Laurence Fox was dismissed from the channel following comments he made about a female journalist.
Paul Goodman, the editor of Conservative Home, told The Times: “GB News, in political terms, has settled somewhere to the left of Reform UK (Richard Tice is among the presenters) but well to the right of, say, the Conservative Parliamentary Party’s centre of gravity.”
He added that GB News will shape Tory members’ view “first, of the Conservatives as the General Election looms into view; second, of Reform UK; third and more specifically, of Nigel Farage, who has turned into the channel’s star presenter; fourth of post-election Tory debate and, therefore, of any leadership election, assuming that there is one in the event of the party going into opposition”.
Farage (below) has said he is still deciding whether to take a “full, active role” in the General Election.
He told World at One on BBC Radio 4: “The level of distrust amongst traditional Conservative voters is at a level we’ve not seen in modern time” and that “eye-watering” levels of immigration were a betrayal of Brexit.
Sunak previously suggested Farage could rejoin the Tories, saying the party is a “broad church”.
