Nigel Farage blasts BBC as Reform UK files formal complaint over ‘planted audience member’

Nigel Farage speaks out on BBC bias allegations as he recounts words from Donald Trump | 

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Nigel Farage has blasted the BBC in yet another bias row after it emerged a Reform-critical audience member from a crunch by-election TV debate is now standing as a Plaid Cymru candidate.

Reform UK’s chairman David Bull made a formal complaint to the BBC regarding the incident after one local journalist described the fiery exchange as the turning point in the Caerphilly by-election campaign.

Plaid Cymru had been neck-and-neck with Reform UK ahead of polls opening in October last year, with Lindsay Whittle later opening up a 3,848-vote buffer over Llyr Powell.

The Welsh nationalists have since unveiled Alison Vyas, the mother who locked horns with Mr Powell, as a community candidate in Caerphilly.

Following the debate, Mrs Vyas also appeared in social media content for Plaid Cymru alongside Mr Whittle.

Responding to the revelations, Mr Farage said: “Trust in the BBC has been shaken by scandals in recent years, from Huw Edwards to the selective editing of a clip of President Trump.

“Now, this revelation will be the final straw for many people in Wales.

“How can there be any confidence that Reform will get a fair and balanced hearing when this is the kind of thing that happens at key election debates?”

The Reform UK leader last year blasted the BBC after it emerged the broadcaster’s director of nations was former Plaid Cymru chief executive Rhuannedd Richards.

Just weeks after the Donald Trump-BBC feud broke out, the broadcaster was drawn into yet another row on a special episode of Question Time.

The BBC had invited invited multiple “asylum seekers” to sit among the live audience in Dover – ground zero of Britain’s migrant crisis.

During the show, one of the migrants revealed that his asylum application had been rejected by six other countries before he came into Britain.

And speaking to GB News after he got home from Dover, Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf said: “It was put to me, would a Reform Government deport him?

“And I said, look, you know, we’re always going to give her the same answer on this. If you came to this country illegally, yes, you will be deported. Absolutely.

“And there were sort of gasps in the audience, which obviously I don’t know how.

“By the way, this is another stunning achievement from the BBC. They managed to rig… an audience in Dover of all places – a seat that looks as if the General Election would happen tomorrow, I think Reform would take handily.

“How did they manage to stack up so many people who gave rapturous applause to Zack Polanski, talking about open borders and more immigration? The whole thing was incredibly surreal. I think it is frankly, a scandal.”

Asked by GB News whether the chaos was an example of BBC bias, Mr Yusuf encouraged viewers to watch clips of the episode online, before noting that he “could not believe this was happening in such an open and blatant way”.

He had earlier blasted: “It is a scandal that licence fee money is being paid to bring to air an ‘immigration special’ where people who literally broke into this country are getting to air their views.

“What’s next? On Budget day, is the BBC going to bring us the viewpoint of tax evaders? I don’t know where we go from here.”

Late last year, the BBC was rocked by a major bias row after one of its Panorama documentaries was found to have misled viewers.

The show had spliced together two parts of a speech made by Donald Trump to make it look like he had directly encouraged his supporters to riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2020.

The chaos forced the resignation of director general Tim Davie, as well as BBC News CEO Deborah Turness.

In December, Mr Trump formally accused the BBC of defamation and breaking Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

The President is pushing for $5billion (£3.74billion) for each alleged offence.

A spokesman for his legal team said at the time: “The BBC has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own Leftist political agenda.”