A stickler for impartiality or the leader of a “right-wing cabal” at the heart of the BBC? A bulwark against “woke groupthink” or an “active agent of the Tory party”? These are just some of the labels that have been levelled at Robbie Gibb in recent years – and now these contradictions in his position at the BBC seem to be near breaking point.
If Gibb’s name is unfamiliar to you, that’s probably because his roles – be it as a Tory spin doctor, news programme editor or a BBC board member – tend to be behind the scenes in media and politics, the two fields he has spent his career hopping between. But in the wake of two high-profile resignations at the BBC following a controversy over the editing of a Panorama documentary about Donald Trump, Gibb has become the story in his own right.
