The Conservatives have assembled a “dossier of evidence” about alleged anti-Tory bias as the BBC ahead of the general election.
Party insiders quoted in the Daily Mail say they have been tracking news coverage on the BBC and found wall-to-wall coverage of scandals to hit the Tory Party involving MPs William Wragg and Mark Menzies, while problems afflicting Labour, such as the Angela Rayner council house row, has gone largely unnoticed.
They are understood to have raised concerns in particular about the BBC News website, which they say is feeding licence fee payers a “diet of woke bias”.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, a Tory source said: “The BBC aren’t even pretending to be impartial in their news coverage these days.
“Last week the Times had two prominent stories: One broke the news about Menzies, the other that Angela Rayner was facing multiple lines of investigation by the police over her council house sale. Guess which one they followed up?”
Last week, The Times reported that Mr Menzies had called his 78-year old former campaign manager, Kate Fieldhouse, at 3.15am one day in December, claiming he was locked in a flat and needed £5,000 as a matter of “life and death”.
The sum, which rose to £6,500, was eventually paid by his office manager from her personal bank account and subsequently reimbursed from funds raised from donors in an account named Fylde Westminster Group, it is alleged.
The Times also reported that £14,000 given by donors for Tory campaign activities was transferred to Mr Menzies’ personal bank accounts and used for private medical expenses.
Rayner, meanwhile, could be on the line for a tax bill “no more than £3,500” if it is found that her ex-council house wasn’t her main residence when she sold it in 2015 – almost ten years ago.