Laura Kuenssberg will replace Andrew Marr as presenter of BBC’s Sunday morning politics show

604

View
comments

Laura Kuenssberg will take over as permanent presenter of the BBC’s Sunday morning politics show from September, the broadcaster said.  

In December, she announced she was stepping down as the broadcaster’s political editor after seven years.

Kuenssberg will start her role when the show relaunches this September with a new set, title, format and title music.

She will take over from Sophie Raworth, who has been presenting the show, currently titled Sunday Morning, since January, following the departure of Andrew Marr. 

The new role could see Kuenssberg land a £76,000 pay rise to bring her in line with Marr who was paid £340,000 before he left to join LBC. According to the corporation’s most recent annual report, Kuenssberg earned between £260,000 and £264,999 as political editor.

Kuenssberg said: ‘I couldn’t be more delighted. For decades Sunday morning has been the moment to explore the events that shape us and to challenge and listen to our politicians.

‘It’s an honour to take the chair for that conversation in the 2020s.’

Interim director of BBC News Jonathan Munro said: ‘Laura’s the perfect host for our flagship weekend politics show – she’s an engaging presenter and a razor-sharp political interviewer, and she knows exactly which questions audiences want answered.’ 

BBC chief content officer Charlotte Moore added: ‘Laura’s one of the BBC’s biggest talents and I’m delighted she’s becoming the new face of Sunday mornings.

‘I’m very much looking forward to seeing how she makes the show her own.’

Munro thanked Raworth and said she was doing a ‘fantastic job, ranging from robust interviews with presidents and prime ministers to moving reports on the flight from Ukraine’.

He said he was ‘delighted’ she had agreed to continue in the role until summer. 

Having taken over from Nick Robinson in 2015, Kuenssberg became the first woman to hold the BBC political editor role and covered a feverish period of politics including the Brexit referendum, two general elections and the Covid pandemic.

The BBC had not initially revealed her future role at the corporation but said she would take part in a range of news and current affairs projects across TV, radio and online and that more details would be announced in the new year.

It was previously suggested that Kuenssberg could become a presenter on Radio 4’s flagship Today programme as part of a major reshuffle of senior on-air staff before reports she was mooted as the replacement for Marr on the Sunday morning politics show.

Marr presented the last episode of his long-running Sunday politics programme in December, leaving the BBC after 21 years to host radio shows on LBC and Classic FM, for rival broadcaster Global.

Kuenssberg’s replacement has yet to be announced but Sophy Ridge, who hosts Sky News’ flagship Sunday morning show, and ITV News’ deputy political editor Anushka Asthana are now the two frontrunners.  

In October, when rumours of Kuenssberg stepping down first emerged, Jon Sopel was thought to be favourite to replace her but he then joined LBC alongside Emily Maitlis. 

Kuenssberg, who also found a new audience by appearing on the Brexitcast podcast throughout the UK’s Brexit negotiations with the EU, has faced accusations of bias from across the political spectrum.

In 2020, she was criticised after appearing to defend Dominic Cummings following reports that he had flouted lockdown rules.

Within 30 minutes of the story breaking, Kuenssberg had shared a rebuttal from an unnamed source claiming that the then Prime Minister’s senior aide’s 260-mile trip from London to his parents’ home in Durham was ‘within [the] guidelines’.

In response to the Daily Mirror journalist who broke the story, Kuenssberg tweeted: ‘Source says his trip was within guidelines as Cummings went to stay with his parents so they could help with childcare while he and his wife were ill – they insist no breach of lockdown’. 

Her reply was immediately met by a chorus of condemnation from Labour-supporting users, with some accusing her of being a ‘mouthpiece for the Government’ and a ‘Tory stooge’.

Kuenssberg was revealed to be Mr Cummings’s only regular contact, due to the broadcaster’s ‘special position’ in the country.

During his bombshell evidence session to MPs last year, the former Downing Street aide said the political editor was the ‘main’ journalist he would speak to – but stressed they would only talk once every ‘three or four weeks’ to ‘give guidance on big stories’.

Mr Cummings then made a series of scathing claims about the Prime Minister’s handling of the Covid pandemic – including that Boris Johnson allegedly viewed the virus as a ‘scare story’ just a month before the first lockdown – in a sit-down interview with Kuenssberg.

During the 2019 General Election, Kuenssberg, along with ITV’s political editor Robert Peston, tweeted the false claim that an aide of disgraced ex-minister Matt Hancock was punched by a Labour activist.

The claim was quickly disproved by video evidence, forcing them to back down and apologise for the misleading information.

At the Labour Party conference in 2017, she had to be protected by security guards following abuse she had received for her reporting on Jeremy Corbyn. Critics claimed she was not neutral and treated the former Labour leader unfairly.

Kuenssberg also attracted controversy in 2021 after a complaint was made against her over her use of the phrase ‘nitty gritty’ while discussing Downing Street business on the Brexitcast.

Anti-racism campaigners claim the term originates from the slave trade, and was reportedly banned by Sky Sports last year amid concerns.

However, programme bosses threw out the complaint against Kuenssberg.

Her decision to stand down as political editor came amid an exodus of top talent at the BBC, with Maitlis and Sopel leaving for Global in February, Marr heading off last year, and former BBC Radio 6 Music presenter Shaun Keaveny also leaving the corporation.

The former bosses of Maitlis and Sopel are understood to have found out just hours before media group Global announced the deal on February 22.

The pair are now set to land a huge cash boost. Outgoing North America editor Sopel is thought to have nearly doubled his BBC pay of up to £234,999.

Newsnight presenter Maitlis is believed to have got a pay rise from her salary band of up to £329,999. One source described the deal as an ‘irresistible package’. 

Recent departures have sparked talk of a ‘brain drain’ and ‘exodus’ at the corporation’s news division.

BBC insiders said they believed Maitlis – who has been at the corporation since 2001 – quit in part because she was ‘frustrated’ at being ‘ticked-off’ over impartiality.

She was at the centre of a row in 2020 when the BBC decided she had breached rules in a monologue about Dominic Cummings’s trip to Durham during lockdown.

In June, she was reprimanded for sharing a Twitter post by Piers Morgan about the pandemic that the corporation said was ‘clearly controversial’.

A senior source said the pair’s defection was ‘extraordinary’ particularly as Sopel was the ‘clear front-runner’ to replace Kuenssberg as political editor.

Prior to becoming the BBC’s politics editor, Kuenssberg served as the corporation’s chief political correspondent. She also previously held senior roles at ITV News and BBC Two’s Newsnight.

In 2016, Kuenssberg was awarded Broadcaster of the Year by the Political Studies Association, recognising her work covering the Brexit Referendum and subsequent follow-up stories.

She was also honoured as the Journalist of the Year at the British Journalism Awards the same year.