Former British head of government Boris Johnson will join conservative channel GB News next year, where he will play a “key role” in covering the British and American elections. Boris Johnson, 59, pushed to resign in the summer of 2022 after a series of scandals, first and foremost that of parties in Downing Street in violation of anti-covid rules, joins several figures from the Conservative Party on the channel, which presents itself as a standard bearer for freedom of expression.
The head of government from 2019 to 2022, who took the United Kingdom out of the European Union, will present a series of programs which will “expose the power of Great Britain across the world”, as well as programs in public, the channel announced on Friday. “GB News is a rebel channel with a loyal and growing audience,” said Boris Johnson, “delighted” at the idea of delivering “his frank opinions on world affairs”.
“An incredible talent”
The channel’s editorial director Michael Booker spoke of the channel’s “tremendous” pride that Boris Johnson, “the most influential prime minister of our generation” and “an incredibly talented journalist”, is joining the GB News “family”. . After his resignation as an MP in June after an investigation concluded that he had lied to Parliament in his explanations about “partygate”, Boris Johnson returned to writing as an editorialist for the very conservative Daily Mailin addition to his lucrative speaking activities.
Before devoting himself to politics, as mayor of London and in several governments, Boris Johnson started as a trainee journalist at Times through family relationships. He was quickly fired for an invented quote. In 1989 he became Brussels correspondent for Daily Telegraphwhere he scrutinized European institutions, before becoming a political columnist in London for the conservative daily and the magazine The Spectator.
No stranger to controversy since its launch in June 2021, GB News has been repeatedly singled out by the British media regulator, Ofcom, for breaches of its duty of impartiality.