Yesterday Guido revealed the BBC has appointed a Brexit-hating Plaid Cymru-voter as its new Radio Wales Editor. There was plenty of material in Carolyn Hitt’s social media history to comb through, and it turns out her anti-Tory tweets and op-eds barely scratch the surface. There’s a lot more going on over at BBC Cymru Wales…

In February 2020, Hitt doubled down on her Welsh nationalism by appearing as a keynote speaker at the YesCymru conference, a gathering organised by the pro-independence group which claims to be committed to “civic nationalism“. There she said she was “willing to pick up the ball and run” for independence…

How someone so obviously partisan came to land a cushty job at the BBC becomes clear when looking at who appointed her: Rhuanedd Richards, the Director of BBC Wales, was a special adviser to Elin Jones in the Labour-Plaid “One Wales” coalition before going on to serve as chief executive of the party for over five years. The idea that anyone in Westminster would land a similar job in Broadcasting House is laughable.

By pure coincidence, in 2020 Carolyn Hitt appears to have gone on a fun trip to Dublin with none other than Rhuanedd Richards’ former boss, and current Speaker of the Senedd, Elin Jones. To whom Hitt is reportedly very close…

Lesley Griffiths, a Labour member of the Welsh Assembly, is also in the holiday snap. In a statement after the appointment, Richards insists Hitt won the role after a “very competitive recruitment process“. Certainly looks like it.

It didn’t take long for the BBC to drop Matthew Stadlen as a new 5 Live presenter after Guido revealed a string of pro-Labour, anti-Tory tweets – including him mulling standing as a Labour candidate at the next election – though by the look of things they haven’t learnt any lessons about vetting new hires after the row. It’s now come to Guido’s attention that their latest hire over at BBC Wales may not gel with DCMS’ new impartiality drive…

Earlier this week Carolyn Hitt announced she was leaving the Western Mail and WalesOnline after 30 years to take up a new role as the editor of BBC Radio Wales and Sport. Welcoming the appointment, the director of BBC Cymru Wales said she’ll bring “a wealth of experience and creativity to this vital role”. She also brings a swathe of Tory and Brexit-hatred…

Given Guido doesn’t want to be accused of a Hitt job, he also took time to browse some of Carolyn’s op-eds from her time at Wales Online. She was clearly shocked and disappointed that her Welsh countrymen dared to vote out in the EU referendum, penning a piece entitled “EU Referendum: We don’t really keep a welcome in the hillsides anymore, do we? Wales’ sense of self has been shaken to the core by voting overwhelmingly to leave the EU”, in which she admonished the Welsh people for not voting the same way as Northern Ireland and Scotland but with “middle England”. 

In September 2019 she came out backing Welsh independence, writing “Boris, Brexit, the possible breakaway of Scotland and growing support for a united Ireland should shock us out of Cymric complacency and get us thinking what would be left for Wales in the shake-down of a break-up of the union.”

In 2017 she opined that she had been wrong about Jeremy Corbyn, who in the end “came over as a decent bloke who stuck to his principles and engaged with and listened to the public“, going on to describe The Sun, The Daily Mail and the Daily Express as “far-right rags” that “reached new levels of toxic propaganda”. Good luck with the new job Carolyn…