John McDonnell is doing his best to keep Labour’s hopeless row with the BBC going, this time bizarrely – and wrongly – accusing the Daily Politics of being produced by “a private company”. McDonnell claims in an interview with Politics.co.uk:

“Remember, this is not an attack on the BBC and it’s not an attack on Laura Kuenssberg either. There is a private company that makes the Politics programme which is commissioned by the BBC… The editor of the programme obviously decided to do maximum damage to Jeremy’s standing.”

This is simply untrue.

A BBC spokesman stresses to Guido that the Daily Politics is not made by a “private company”. It is produced in-house by the Beeb. They say in response to McDonnell’s comments that “of course all our Politics programme are entirely consistent with the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and values”. In other words, the Shadow Chancellor is talking B.S.

The most likely explanation is that McDonnell confused the Daily Politics with This Week, BBC2’s Thursday night politics programme which is made by a private company called Juniper TV. Needless to say they have nothing to do with the Daily Politics, and nothing to do with the Doughty resignation. Not like McDonnell to have difficulty with the truth…