 After months of speculation, this week, Andrew Neil quit as lead presenter and chairman of GB News. His first media appearance after making the announcement was on BBC's Question Time. This is how he explained his decision. In the run-up to the launch, through the launch and in the aftermath of the launch, and I think most of you, anything about it, will know that you couldn't file the launch under startling success, more and more differences emerge between myself and the other senior managers and the board of GB News. And rather than these differences narrowing, they got wider and wider. And I felt it was best that if that's the route they wanted to take, then that's up to them. And what was that route? And, well, the route is what I think is what you can see on GB News at the moment. People should make up their own minds as to whether that's what they want to watch. I thought it wasn't for me, and I had wanted a different route. Doesn't mean I'm right or they're wrong, but it certainly was a difference. And is it because you felt they were going too far to the right? I also spent the summer looking at all the work. No, I'm asking, is it that you felt they were going too far to the right? People should make up their own minds on that. No, but we're just wondering why you've been... What I've told you is that the differences were such that the direction they were going in was not the direction that I had outlined. It was not the direction that I had envisaged for the channel. But I was a minority of one. So it's doing what it's doing, and it's up to them. Good luck to them if that's what they want to do, but it wasn't going to be with me. Lockdown and the summer and all the rest of it made us rethink our priorities as well. And I decided, too, it was time I had to cut down on some of my commitments and perhaps maybe enjoy myself a little bit more. Now you can get to computer and question time every now and then, which I haven't done for two decades. And given that these differences is a merit, these disagreements of the direction of the channel and the way it was going, and not many other things, too. I don't want to bore you with. It seemed to me that one of the commitments I should give up is GB News. And that's what I've done. I'm very comfortable with it. Indeed, I feel at peace with myself as a result. People know my kind of journalism, and that's where I'm going to stick to. People know my kind of journalism, and that's what I'm going to stick to. The implication is clear. Andrew Neil wanted to launch a channel that was independent, mided and freed from the stifling culture of the BBC, but he had no intention of creating a ferrage-fronted far-right outlet spreading misinformation about COVID and inciting hatred against asylum seekers by leaving his now at peace with himself. How noble of Andrew Neil. Thankfully, that self-serving account given by Neil did not go unchallenged on question time. This was the response of Orfer Nels Abbey. So I know there's a cabinet reshuffle going on, and I've had to do my own, too. So I came with something from my own cabinet, also. And it's just, um... What does that say? We can't see it here on the panel. You might remember these days or so. So it says, um, why Britain's new TV newest channel won't be woke. So, and I thought to myself, I'd just bring that along. And for the benefit of those at home, or so I bought a bigger copy, too. So there we go. So as you can see... There you go. And you might have to explain why everyone is familiar with GB News. So you might have to explain why you brought that. Okay, so GB News... Sorry, everybody's not familiar with GB News. Well... Okay, so... Viewing figures would suggest that not everyone is familiar with GB News. You're right, absolutely. They are close to zero viewers on an ongoing basis for a long time now. GB News was set up, as it says over here, in black and white, and a channel that was intended to not be quote-unquote woke. That it was going to be a channel that was going to fight the quote-unquote culture wars. I posited to you, Andrew, that you actually knew exactly where you guys were setting up. That you were setting... When you used the term, like, woke as a pejorative, I put it to you that you knew exactly who that dog was. So you exactly knew the dog. You were blowing that whistle at you. So why am I not still there? Well, why were you there to begin with when you were there? If you're saying that what's happened is what I wanted, why would I be here tonight and not still stand? Because I think... Well, I'll give you my reason, right? I mean, you don't know me. I'll give you my reason. And you are assuming things of which you have no knowledge whatsoever. Well, I'll give you my perception of how I view things. So I think... Are you prejudiced? I'll give you my... I think GB News, when it launched up, was actually a very, very shoddy platform or so. It came out. It was embarrassing to watch, to Beatrice. It's not going to be Fox News. It's not Fox News, by any means. Fox News actually has very, very decent production values or so and very well fought through programming. GB News is by no means whatsoever Fox News. It's actually a very inferior product to almost anything on the market. But what we actually had, what GB News did represent is the exact same thing that Fox News represented, which was for the purpose of remain streaming and maintaining almost a cocktail of bigotries within our nation. You can see how effective that attack line was because Andrew Neil resorted to accusing the speaker of prejudices. I hate to break it to Andrew Neil, but being a white man journalist who joins a right-wing outlet, that's not a protected characteristic. It's not prejudicial to make judgments about someone based on what that individual has said and done in the past. It's not prejudiced. He's not pre-judging anything. He's observing what you're doing and he's making conclusions from his own observations. I mean, that's just Judas. It's just the judging bit. There's no pre-involved. So I thought when he said, oh, it's got even lower production values than Fox and it cuts to Andrew Neil's face, I thought that's one of the best moments of television. I've seen him in question time in a really, really long while. He was seething. And I think the way that Neil started at the start of that clip, when he starts talking about how we should want to take it in different directions, good luck to them, et cetera, when there's somebody like Andrew Neil from that generation with his politics, when they say good luck to them, it means for any of our audience out there, listeners or viewers who aren't British, it means I really hope you fucking fail. That's what it means, good luck to them. So that's where we are, I think. It's a really strange, strange sort of way things have played out. I remember speaking to Andrew Neil a couple of years ago, you were there actually, Michael, and I did BBC this week. And you could see he wanted out of the BBC, and he wanted to try something new. He's really fascinated by media as a world. He was previously involved in The Sunday Times, The Economist, and he wanted to do something over here, which was like Fox. He just did. The former anyway, if not the politics. And it's just been so catastrophically pulled off. I kind of wonder, did he think it was ever going to be any different? And that would be a really interesting interview. I don't think it's about the politics. I agree with that conclusion. It's actually about just how shoddy and ramshackle it is. And that's a real affront to a man of Andrew Neil's sense of self. He's worked for some of the most important media outlets in the world. He helped start up Sky News, by the way, he helped go and start up Fox News in the early days. Like I say, it was The Sunday Times. He was previously at The Economist. He was of course working for the BBC, who I expect to take him back, by the way, with open arms. Expect Andrew Neil to be hosting the BBC's election coverage in 2023. And I think that's what hurt him most, somebody who likes to be associated with top production values that wasn't happening at GB News. Well, I didn't know that. So Andrew Neil was involved in the creation of Fox News as well, was he? Yeah. So he was at The Sunday Times from 83 to 92, something like that. He was at The Sunday Times the best part of 10 years. He doesn't replace Larry Evans, but he replaces the one after Larry Evans. You go from actually quite a progressive, interesting journalist to somebody else, and then I think it's Andrew Neil. Or maybe he directly replaces Larry Evans. Towards the end of that, Murdoch kind of, for some reason, just doesn't like him anymore, wants him out. And of course, Murdoch is starting at this point Sky News. So he says to Andrew Neil, like, why aren't you going to help start this project up? Andrew Neil starts it up. He's not in front of camera, like Adam Bolton, but he's, by the way, was there at the beginning. But he was sort of helping the whole project get going. And then after that, he says, I want to send you to America to work on Fox News. So he goes to work in New York. Not for very long. I think six months a year, something like that. So he was there right at the beginning of Fox News before it's this massive channel. And he had a role in its initial growth, for sure. They piloted a few shows where he would be the anchor and so on, didn't work out. But he was the guy who'd basically executed Sky News for Murdoch, who then went to the US and worked on Fox News. Because, of course, Murdoch owns the Sunday Times. At that time, owned Sky News and, of course, Fox News as well. And Andrew Neil in the 1980s and early 1990s was known as Rupert Murdoch's Rottweiler. Very strange that he then worked for the BBC and everybody says the BBC's left wing, but there we are. That's really interesting. Because even if you take him at his word, that he does think the politics of GB News is now repulsive and he does think the politics of Fox News is now repulsive, you might then ask, this is the second time this has happened, Andrew Neil. This is the second time you've been used for your status and your stature to get going a media operation which ends up being an absolutely malicious force in society. How many more times are you going to be used to such a malignant end? You've got to ask, what are you doing with yourself? Could you not see this coming? I didn't know that he had this Fox News background as well. He just keeps helping birth cancers into our meteor ecology. What a legacy to have.