Robbie Gibb, The BBC, And Ted Malloch

The damage done to the BBC’s credibility by the reign of Robbie Gibb may be significantly worse than feared, after his involvement in the strange tale of one Theodore Roosevelt Malloch and his deservedly brief time in the media spotlight was unearthed. “Ted Malloch tipped to be US ambassador to EU tells the Daily Politics ‘UK is now at the front of the queue’ for a trade deal with the USA” told Gibb in January 2017. It wasn’t.

Pal of Nige's? No problem, on the BBC you go

But, as the Tweeter known as Property Spotter has pointed out, it was not the BBC’s first promotion of Malloch: this had occurred in November 2016, when he was put in front of the cameras as a serious contender for a top job in the Trump administration. By the following February, this “top job” had been upgraded in the retelling to US Ambassador to the EU. Only after the BBC pitched his name did the press pick up on him.

That suggests the Beeb made the first move. So what was there to commend Malloch? Sadly, not very much at all. Nor has his behaviour instilled confidence in his abilities, with this priceless comment on his appearance in a live debate in November 2016 quite the stand-out: “Excerpts from the programme reveal Malloch's inability to distinguish truth and falsehood”. Yet there was the BBC, two months later, promoting him.

It gets worse. Malloch has published a memoir. His Wiki entry: “In February 2017, the Financial Times reported that Ted Malloch embellished or falsified seven claims in his memoir Davos, Aspen & Yale: My Life Behind the Elite Curtain as a Global Sherpa … The alleged false claims include his documentary being Emmy-nominated, that he had written for The New York Times and Washington Post, that he held a professorship at Oxford University, and that he had completed his ‘doctoral programme’ in less than three years”.

He’s a liar and a fantasist. The whoppers include a claim “that he was ‘knighted in the Sovereign Order of St John by the Queen, Elizabeth II herself’”. Why should he be made US Ambassador to the EU? “I had in a previous career a diplomatic post where I helped bring down the Soviet Union. So maybe there's another union that needs a little taming”. He was given a platform to spread this hokum by, you guessed it, the BBC.

His ability to be away with the fairies includes his claim “The EU is part of, of course, the globalist Empire, the New World Order. I think many of its origins are in fact quite evil … It's basically a German takeover of Europe making Europe into its own puppet state with its crony capitalism and its fake currency of the Euro”. That was before he went off on a bizarre diatribe about Luciferianism. And no, I am not making this up.

Look whose fingers are in the pie. Again

There is no merit in promoting him. None whatsoever. Except by one narrow interest group - those who would rip the UK out of the EU and reorient it as some kind of US satellite state. It should surprise no-one that Malloch is pals with the likes of Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, who would very much like a bit of that action. And that’s that. Except for Robbie Gibb.

Ted Malloch was - deservedly - a nobody until the BBC began to promote him. And Robbie Gibb, called out last week to such effect by MP and now ex-Tory Nick Boles as an unwavering hard Brexit lover, was a key part of that promotion.  Another day, another inexplicable lapse in editorial standards, another brick out of the BBC standards wall - and another episode that leads back to Gibb’s door. This is not a coincidence.

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