6 Toot 🧵 ‼️
1/ Sunday Times: SCOOP by Harry Yorke and Gabriel Pogrun

The BBC chairman, the prime minister and the £800,000 loan guarantee

Bloody hell. So the BBC in the form of its chairman, Sharp, has been sitting on this story FOR YEARS @Ofcom

Impartiality⁉️ Not even lip service.

The BBC chairman - Sharp- , a Tory donor, helped to arrange a guarantee on a loan of up to £800,000 for Boris Johnson weeks before the then prime minister recommended him for the role.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-bbc-chairman-the-prime-minister-and-the-800-000-loan-guarantee-f7nt5kfml

The BBC chairman, the prime minister and the £800,000 loan guarantee

The BBC chairman helped to arrange a guarantee on a loan of up to £800,000 for Boris Johnson weeks before the then prime minister recommended him for the role

The Sunday Times

2/

Richard Sharp was involved in talks about financing Johnson’s Downing Street lifestyle in November and December 2020.

“Sharp, 66, a former banker at Goldman Sachs, had already submitted his application to become chairman of the public service broadcaster & had reached the final stages of the recruitment process.”

“The BBC chairman helped to arrange a guarantee on a loan of up to £800,000 for Boris Johnson weeks before the then prime minister recommended him for the role”

FFS.

3/ It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that a PM that needs a £800k credit line is a security risk

And an ethics risk.

Stunned to discover that the CABINET OFFICE and SIMON CAVE knew about this.

How the f*** did Sharp get appointed?

Have they all lost their minds?

I’m trying to get my head around this.

The BBC is PACKED with people who are supposed to be journalists.

4/ Did they have enough journalistic nous to find out this story but were forbidden from publishing it because it would embarrass both the Chairman and the Government @Ofcom ?

In which case how is that remotely in keeping with its duty of impartiality in its Charter @Ofcom ?

Or did this organisation packed full of journalists paid for out of the public purse not know about this story⁉️

It just passed them by to be scooped by the Sunday Times⁉️

@Fascinatorfun More to the point, why have both Sharp and Johnson not been arrested and charged with corruption? How is Sharp still serving in a role obtained through corruption?