BBC’s Nick Robinson: I regret telling Boris Johnson to ‘stop talking’

LONDON — Nick Robinson has said he regrets telling Boris Johnson to “stop talking” during a heated BBC interview in October 2021. 

The Radio 4 presenter and former political editor sparker a nationwide furor by cutting across Johnson in the first interview the then-prime minister had given to the “Today” program in two years, following a government boycott of the BBC’s flagship current affairs show. 

As Johnson plowed ahead with one of his trademark lengthy answers, an exasperated Robinson interrupted to say: “Prime minister — stop talking! We are going to have questions and answers, not where you merely talk, if you wouldn’t mind.” The BBC received hundreds of complaints about the exchange, and subsequently issued a statement clarifying “there was certainly no desire to appear rude.”

Speaking on a new episode of POLITICO ‘s Westminster Insider podcast, “The Art of the Political Interview,” Robinson explained what was happening behind the scenes. 

“[Johnson] started to read off a piece of paper,” Robinson recalled. “He then — as I’m waving my hands about … to try and say, ‘please stop. Let me get to the next point’ — he broke eye contact and started looking at the wall. And I, frankly, lost my temper. I just thought: ‘You’re not playing the game at all.’”

Robinson admitted the interjection was “a bit of a shock to people listening,” but said he had intended it “to be the equivalent of a kind of bucket of water over the head” to force the prime minister to engage.

“Loads of people have got up and said, ‘we cheered when you said that, because we knew he was waffling and being evasive,’” Robinson added. “I suppose the only reason I’m not happy about it [is that] I like to be in control. I didn’t like it, because I don’t want people to say that I don’t respect people in high office — because I do.”

The presenter added: “I regret saying it because it looked discourteous. It wasn’t planned. It looked like I lost my temper.”

The podcast also revisits the controversial July 2016 interview between Andrea Leadsom and Rachel Sylvester of the Times, in which Leadsom claimed that having children gave her an edge over her opponent, Theresa May, in the race to be prime minister. The backlash that followed forced Leadsom to drop out of the contest, leaving May the winner by default.

Leadsom and Sylvester discuss their differing experiences of that controversial interview. Leadsom, while saying she “takes it on the chin” and blaming “my naivety, my lack of experience,” also claimed the Times “had its own agenda.” “I had a big target on my forehead,” she said. “I’d been an absolutely passionate supporter of leaving the EU. It’s a real masterclass … in the motivations of journalists coming into interviews.”

Syvlester, however, responded: “It’s just completely not true. There really wasn’t an agenda. There was a sort of conspiracy theory from some of her supporters afterwards that it was all part of some sort of ‘Remainer’ plot, you know, because the Times had backed Remain, and it just wasn’t true.”

She added: “I’d just written down what she’d said and put it in the paper. That’s journalism, that’s not an agenda.”