For years, British politicians made the error of ignoring, and then mocking, Nigel Farage and his UK Independence Party. “Fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists,” was the verdict of David Cameron, a Conservative leader, in 2006. “A collection of clowns,” later concurred Kenneth Clarke, his justice secretary. UKIP was an electoral minnow; its gatherings were farces. Yet Mr Farage’s loyal following of unfashionable people from unimportant towns allowed him to redraw the terms of British politics, and to drag the Conservative Party to the right. Brexit followed.

Do not make the same mistake with GB News, a television channel launched in June 2021 and of which Mr Farage is the prime-time star. It too is easy to ignore, buried on Freeview channel 236, and offers plenty to mock. Owned by Sir Paul Marshall, a hedge-fund boss, and Legatum, an investment firm, it lost £31m in its first year, along with a raft of presenters. Advert breaks are filled with promotions for gold dealers and erectile-dysfunction drugs. (It is a target of a pressure group which lobbies brands to boycott right-wing media.) Its cast includes several fruitcakes, but the station has no foreign bureaus or roaming newscopters, and when real news happens, admits one insider, the viewers switch to other channels. But watch carefully. This is a project to redraw the rules of British television news, which has hitherto subscribed to a doctrine of political impartiality and the public interest. And like UKIP, it may help remake the Tories, too.

Angelos Frangopoulos, the channel’s chief executive, is a veteran of Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News Australia, and shares his former boss’s belief in free speech and disdain for the broadcasting establishment. His chief innovation is opinion-driven coverage. From mid-afternoon, hosts deliver monologues, the staple themes of which are migration, motoring, woke culture and Meghan Markle. (Fox News is a clear inspiration.) Thus India’s moon landing on August 24th was marked with a denunciation of government aid to the country. “The British government is laughing at us,” declared Patrick Christys. “Is it time to call a national emergency?” asked Michelle Dewberry, opening the next show with a package on migrant boats. A recent motif holds that “anti-white” activists are stirring a “race war” in Britain. A wide streak of internet conspiracism encompasses the usual suspects: the World Economic Forum, vaccine-makers and Bill Gates.

The second innovation is the use of serving politicians, mainly of the right, as presenters rather than merely guests. They include Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former cabinet minister; Lee Anderson, the Tory deputy chairman; and Esther McVey and Philip Davies, a pair of married backbenchers. (Talk TV, a rival launched by Mr Murdoch in April 2022, hosts Nadine Dorries, a departing Tory MP.)

And whereas television news has sought to speak to the whole country, GB News is pursuing a much closer dialogue with a targeted viewership in northern England and the Midlands. Its reach is modest: 600,000 people a day compared with 2.4m for BBC News and 1.7m for Sky News. (It aspires, rather optimistically, to leapfrog both by 2028). Its loyal core is much smaller: just 10% of the audience account for three-quarters of all hours viewed, and they are predominantly older men without degrees, says Enders Analysis, a consultancy. Insiders call them a movement.

GB News’ rivals fear it not for its quality or size, but because it has torn a hole in their regulatory model. Mr Frangopoulos has shown that Britain’s historic style of television news is more a product of journalistic culture and sense of duty than law. The conventions that govern the state are known as the “good chaps theory of government”. Television, it transpires, has been run on a good chaps theory of broadcasting, and it is acutely vulnerable to those who test its boundaries. Ofcom, the watchdog, has opened a clutch of investigations into GB News broadcasts. But helpfully for the channel, it has said the legal duty of “due impartiality” does not prohibit politician-presenters if a programme constitutes “current affairs”, such as a panel discussion, rather than “news”, such as a bulletin. Nor need dissenting voices, while required, get equal airtime. (Mr Anderson’s pinko guests sit by a sign reading: “Left in the Corner”.) Nick Robinson, a BBC newsman, says the rules of the game have changed with no one being told.

Turn on, tune in, drop out

GB News will have a greater impact on the Conservative Party, if—as seems likely—it suffers a heavy defeat at the general election. The channel will position itself as the unofficial opposition to a Labour government. (Its lacerating coverage of Sadiq Khan, the party’s mayor of London, offers a foretaste). It will also be where the Tory right organise and proselytise in the struggle for dominance of the rump party. The channel has hired Christopher Hope, a former journalist at the Telegraph , the pages of which are the historic battlefield for leadership contests and who is well connected to the backbenches. On August 28th it opened a new studio opposite the Houses of Parliament. Candidates who wish to set out the case for leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, or junking climate policies, will find a receptive audience.

But that is not the gift it seems. The greatest threat to opposition parties is irrelevance. Out of office, they retreat into themselves. Jeremy Corbyn, the previous Labour leader, mistook rooms of cheering activists for an adoring nation. The self-styled “People’s Channel” risks performing a similar illusion on the Tories, seeming to be a conduit to the authentic electorate but in truth reaching only a fragment. Indeed, an outlet that on its launch promised to escape the Westminster bubble is often an introspective affair: Mr Anderson interviews Sir Jacob, who interviews Mr Farage, and round they go. The BBC’s motto runs: “Nation shall speak peace unto nation.” GB News is the conservative right speaking unto itself. Its owners may conclude that is a sustainable basis for a channel. For a party of government, it is a trap. ■

Read more from Bagehot, our columnist on British politics:
Britons are not all in it together (whatever they might think) (Aug 23rd)
What happens to comedy when British politics becomes a joke? (Aug 17th)
From wild swimming to grouse shooting, Britain is in hock to hobbyists (Aug 9th)

Also: How the Bagehot column got its name