Desert Island Discs no-platforming Farage shows what’s gone wrong at the BBC

The programme once hosted the vile Hitler-loving Diana Mosley. Now it won’t give houseroom to Britain’s most popular politician Daily Telegraph 01/06/26 One of the few remaining jewels in the BBC’s tarnished crown is Desert Island Discs. One reason why the show is still running after 84 years is its uniquely broad range of guests, from every field and across the political spectrum.

Sir Keir Starmer was a castaway six years ago, though Andy Burnham beat him to it as long ago as 2015. Last January it was Kemi Badenoch’s turn. We are unlikely to hear Nigel Farage on this BBC flagship, though. According to a forthcoming biography by Lord Ashcroft, the Reform UK leader will never be invited to appear because woke employees would object and woke guests might boycott the show. The BBC indignantly denies the claim. Well, it would, wouldn’t it? Yet it is surely reasonable to ask why Farage has never made the cut. However much you criticise him – and I have frequently done so – his impact on British politics is undeniable. Many would plausibly contend that Brexit would not have happened without him. n invitation to the Reform leader to appear on Desert Island Discs is long overdue. As well as his taste in music, Lauren Laverne, the presenter, could grill Farage about his alleged anti-Semitism and racism when a pupil at Dulwich College, his sympathies for Putin and Trump and his relationship with the crypto tycoon Christopher Harborne. What makes the BBC’s cowardice incomprehensible is the fact that in the course of its long history the programme has featured much racier castaways. My late father, the historian and journalist Paul Johnson, was quizzed on the programme by Kirsty Young in 2012, aged 83. Given his sometimes alarming views and love of mischief, I doubt whether he would be invited today. In one year alone, 1989, Desert Island Discs – then presented by the fearless Sue Lawley – entertained listeners with statesmen of such contrasting extremes as Tony Benn and Enoch Powell, not to mention the far-Left trade unionist Arthur Scargill and Hitler’s friend Diana Mosley. While Benn’s red-blooded socialism leaves today’s Labour leadership candidates looking anaemic, Powell’s aim of repatriating all Commonwealth immigrants makes Farage seem like a moderate. Older readers won’t need reminding that Powell, racist or not, was a serious intellectual. His selection of music? Wagner, Beethoven and Haydn. Desert island reading? The Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek. Pressed by Sue Lawley, Powell insisted that his inflammatory 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech had been entirely vindicated by events. Scargill was equally unrepentant about his conduct of the 1984-1985 miners’ strike, which provoked large-scale violence and polarised communities. He even chose Édith Piaf’s song “Non, Je ne regrette rien” to underline his point. But it was Diana Mosley – most outré of the Mitford sisters and widow of Sir Oswald, leader of the Blackshirts – who really tested the limits of BBC tolerance. After praising her “fascinating” friend Adolf Hitler, she was questioned by Sue Lawley about the Holocaust. “I don’t really believe it was six million people,” she replied. Pressed on whether she believed it had happened at all, Lady Mosley replied: “I don’t really, I’m afraid.” Understandably, many listeners were outraged by this airing of Holocaust denial on the BBC. But free speech, even when it caused deep offence, carried more weight in Broadcasting House during the Cold War era. Sir Hugh Carleton Greene (Director-General 1960-1969) was the man who modernised the BBC and is still blamed by some for its Left-liberal bias. Like his more Left-wing novelist brother, Graham, Hugh Greene counted conservatives among his close friends. I have a copy of a book by Axel Springer (whose media empire The Telegraph looks set to join, subject to regulatory approval in Ireland and Austria), with the author’s effusive inscription to “Sir Hugh”. Such a friendship between a centre-Right newspaperman and a centre-Left BBC executive would hardly happen today. The robust liberals who ran the BBC before it embraced political correctness would have relished scrutinising Nigel Farage on its most prestigious programme. The Reithian mission was to “inform, educate and entertain”. Desert Island Discs does all three – but only if the castaways are chosen to serve the interests of the public, not the prejudices of the staff.