The BBC has just released the annual salary report for its stars earning over £150,000. The big hitters are listed below, along with any percentage changes on last year’s figures. Guido notes quite a few of the political hacks have taken significant pay cuts since last year – the overall salary spend is 10% lower than 2020…

Today

• Nick Robinson – £274,999 (-8.3%)
• Mishal Husain – £279,999 (+3.7%)
• Martha Kearney – £254,999 (-0.4%)
• Justin Webb – £259,999 (+2%)
• Amol Rajan – £244,999 (+16.6%)

World at One

• Sarah Montague – £249,999 (-2%)

PM

• Evan Davis – £274,999 (-1.8%)

BBC Breakfast

• Naga Munchetty – 259,999 (+30%)

BBC News at Six and Ten

• Huw Edwards – £429,999 (-8.5%)
• George Alagiah – £329,999 (+3.1%)
• Sophie Raworth – £284,999 (+1.8%)

Question Time

• Fiona Bruce – £409,999 (-9.9%)

Andrew Marr Show

• Andrew Marr – £339,999 (-6.8%)

Newsnight

• Emily Maitlis – £329,999 (-12%)
• Kirsty Wark – £214,999 (-2.3%)

BBC News

• Clive Myrie – £209,999 (-4.5%)
• Reeta Chakrabarti – £179,999 (-2.7%)
• Victoria Derbyshire – £174,999 (-20%)
• Ben Brown – £174,999 (+3%)

On-Air editors and correspondents

• Laura Kuenssberg – £264,999 (-10%)
• Jon Sopel – £234,999 (-2%)
• Jeremy Bowen – £224,999 (NC)
• Katya Adler – £224,999 (+4.7%)
• Faisal Islam – £209,999 (+31%)*

Non-politics or news:

• Gary Lineker – £1.36 million (-22.2%)
• Zoe Ball – £1.135 million (-16.8%)
• Steve Wright – £469,999 (-2%)
• Vanessa Feltz – £394,999 (-3.7%)
• Mary Berry – £219,000 (NC)

Guido congratulates Naga and Faisal Islam on their big wins this year, looks like they’re two of the few to climb the ladder with massive 30% pay increases. There’s still a gender split of 44%-56%, though, despite ex-Director General Tony Hall committing to closing the gap by 2020. Perhaps Tim Davie’s just not as interested…

Read the report in full here.

UPDATE:  *Our fans in the BBC press office get in touch to say Faisal Islam hasn’t had a pay rise, this was his first complete year, last year’s payment represented an incomplete year and so he received £46,000 less.

Rob Roberts’s office has officially denied that the vandalism attack against his constituency office was targeted. According to the office, CCTV footage from the over the weekend shows men fighting near the office before kicking and smashing the office door. Several other businesses were allegedly vandalised during the fight…

Rob Roberts – the recently disgraced MP for Delyn – posted on Facebook that the crime had been “reported to the police”, and “criminal damage is NOT acceptable [and] the actions [of the vandals] are reckless and dangerous”. Rob’s one MP who is happy that there’s CCTV at their office… 

Decisions on whether to end social distancing in the Commons, including returning to full capacity and ending the mask mandate, are to be made by the House of Commons Commission next Monday, Guido understands.

Despite yesterday’s announcement that the government’s mask mandate will end on July 19 (assuming step 4 goes ahead), the Commission hasn’t yet committed to making the same move. Guido hears there is some hesitancy to go ahead with the unlocking now given how close we are to recess, although if the Commons appears risk-averse whilst the rest of the country pushes ahead with a full reopening, the public may well raise a few questions…

Guido presumes that Sky News presenter and host of the station’s Sunday politics show, Trevor Phillips, will not be taking up his Labour Party membership, which was reportedly reinstated 3 weeks ago. Philips was suspended following trumped-up accusations of alleged islamophobia…

Sky News guidelines clearly state that journalists must adhere to “the principles of fairness, accuracy impartiality, legality and rigour” and that the programme must never “show favour”.  Being a paid up member of the Labour Party membership does bring into question that impartiality….

Phillips, who referred to British muslims as “a nation within a nation” and argued that the centre of gravity of British Muslim opinion was “some distance away from the centre of gravity of everybody else’s”, was apparently reinstated without the matter having gone to a National Executive Committee disciplinary panel. Phillips, at the time, condemned the suspension as political gangsterism by then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn…

Ash Sarkar was either hamming up her agreeableness for Politics Live’s more middle-class audience, or she’s performed a significant climbdown from her infamous Piers Morgan “I’m literally a Communist” outburst. Discussing whether young people are rejecting capitalism, Sarkar was asked by Tory MP Tom Hunt to name “a successful socialist country”. Ash responded:

“I’m with you in a critique of authoritarian socialism, I’m a democrat, I like political freedoms”

Give it another few years and she’ll be a Telegraph columnist at this rate…

New research from the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) shows that a whopping 67% of Britons aged 16-34 would like to live in a socialist economic system, with three-quarters also agreeing with the statement that ‘socialism is a good idea, but it has failed in the past because it has been badly done’. “Badly done” is one way of describing the gulags…

Of course, the hilarious irony here is that as much as these dewy-eyed Zoomers weep for a socialist utopia, they don’t like the idea of actually paying for it:

As data from Redfield & Wilton shows, support for cutting spending is actually highest among young people, with 60% of 18-24 year olds and 51% of 25-34 year olds believing the government should cut spending, whilst 48% of over 55s think taxes should be raised – presumably on the working young. The research also shows that a higher proportion of Labour’s predominantly younger voters compared to Tory voters, support tax cuts, which could make Labour’s ongoing policy review more interesting…

The IEA paper’s author, Dr. Kristian Niemietz, adds:

“These results show that “Millennial Socialism” is not just a social media hype, and it was not just a passing fad which ended with Jeremy Corbyn’s resignation… Supporters of the market economy need to accept that challenge, and rise to it, rather than dismiss it, or pretend it is not happening. We need to get better at making the positive case for capitalism, developing market-based policy solutions to the problems young people are facing, as well as explaining why socialism, seductive though it may be, is always and everywhere a dead end.”

Millennial Socialists should take a close look at their payslip, the deductions for tax will be even more if we get an even more socialist government…