Farage, Fox and rolling outrage: the inside story of GB News
I f you have not been watching GB News as much as I have in the past week, you may well not hold the belief that a principal focus of the world’s current affairs is the village of Kegworth in Leicestershire.
A fortnight ago, a hotel in the village was taken over by Home Office agencies to house 250 asylum seekers. GB News led on those reports, and then provided rolling news coverage of subsequent small-scale local protests, with a series of often repeated and tweeted interviews with villagers, and a livestream from outside the parish council meeting in the pub. This content was then used to fuel the on-screen debate to support what might be the unofficial slogan of the channel: “Not far right, just right.”
This news cycle of report, whipped-up anger and obsessive analysis is a familiar one to viewers of the channel, which compulsively promotes the most significant post-Brexit growth industry: the manufacture of partisan outrage.
The previous week, something similar had happened with the news that the Honor Oak pub in Lewisham, south London, was hosting a “magical storytelling session” for children led by a drag artist. Once again, news, reported anger on the streets (if Turning Point extremists appeared alongside megaphone-wielding GB News host Calvin Robinson, that couldn’t be helped) and then nonstop commentary.
There are other topics on rotation on “Britain’s news channel” – the Duke and Duchess of Sussex demanding their daughter be called “princess” and scaremongering about Covid vaccines.
But still, watched over a period of time, the station seems primed to return to its playlist of hits. Performative disgust about the perceived sexualisation of kids (by the “LGBT lobby”) is one strand of this, along with the almost
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