The BBC’s article on extra bus funding from the gutted HS2 leg presents a communist activist as a neutral commentator with no reference to his extreme left views and activity. Matthew Topham is introduced only as a “campaigner at Better Buses for South Yorkshire” before he goes on to bash the Tories’ “small pot of cash” and argue public ownership is the only solution. All aboard the state-owned bus… if it ever turns up.

Topham is actually a corbynista agitator working for the mass-nationalisation campaign group We Own It, which spends most of its time peddling NHS privatisation conspiracy theories. Before he started campaigning for a state takeover of all the buses Topham was an activist for a “green and socially just recovery to the coronavirus crisis and for racial and gender equality in science education and academia“. The BBC naturally makes no reference to any of this…