Interpreting impartiality: An analysis of politicians appearing on the UK’s leading debate and panel programmes
Political debate programmes, such as the BBC’s Question Time and Any Questions, make a significant contribution to the democratic health of the UK. They allow the public to directly question politicians from different parties and hold them to account. Likewise, broadcast programmes that feature panels of political guests, including the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, ITV’s Peston and Sky News’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, provide opportunities to scrutinise the policies of different political parties in both debate and interview formats.
Taken together, these programmes represent some of the most coveted slots in broadcasting for political parties and politicians. They help set the agenda of political conversations, feeding news headlines and social media discussions.
But given the power to represent different political perspectives, the impartiality of selecting politicians to appear on debate and panel programmes is often questioned by parties and the wider public. Complaints and debates about these shows typically focus on how often or little political parties or particular politicians are allowed to appear across different programmes. Since the most popular political debate and panel programmes are produced by broadcast media in the UK, they are legally required to be duly impartial. So how is impartiality interpreted by programme makers?
Interpreting impartiality
Operationalising due impartiality according to the regulatory guidance is not an exact science. When applying impartiality and selecting representatives from different political parties, programme makers are guided by criteria such as reflecting the vote share or the number of politicians elected at the last UK general election, as well as considering how parties performed in recent devolved, regional, and local elections, and the latest opinion polls.
For example, in terms of Parliamentary representation, Reform UK might be considered a small party that returned just five MPs at the last general election. But by vote share, it was the third largest party with 14.3% (behind Labour and the Conservatives). In the 2025 local elections, Reform UK won the most councillors, including two Mayoral contests and, according to aggregate public opinion polls, it has been the most popular party for most of this year. Given this context, which criteria (MPs elected, the vote share at the last general election, electoral performance at the most recent local elections, or latest opinion poll data) should be given more weight when broadcasters apply impartiality? Should Reform UK, for example, appear more often than the Liberal Democrats in broadcast coverage, given its recent electoral and popular support, and overall vote share at the last general election?
The sharp rise in support for political parties beyond the traditional dominance of the Conservatives and Labour in the 2024 UK General Election has made it increasingly challenging for broadcasters to make impartial judgements about the selection of politicians in broadcast media. Voting for parties and independent candidates outside of Labour and the Conservatives reached a historical high of 42.6%. This saw the return of 117 third-party MPs (MPs who don’t represent Labour or the Conservatives), accounting for 18% of all MPs (excluding the Speaker). Aggregate opinion poll data from June 2025 suggests this trend is increasing, placing third-party support at 58.2%.
This raises questions about how broadcasters apply impartiality when selecting representatives from different political parties. Past research has shown they have tended to balance the perspectives of the two major parties, while rotating the representation of politicians from third parties.
To consider the impartial judgements of different broadcasters when they select representatives of political parties, we carried out a content analysis study that systematically analysed the appearances of every politician across a range of leading UK debate and panel programmes during 2024 and 2025.
Design of study
We conducted an analysis of guests selected across five of the UK’s most prominent political discussion programmes, including Any Questions (BBC Radio 4), Peston (ITV), Question Time (BBC), Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg (BBC) and Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips (Sky News).
We systematically analysed every politician that appeared in these programmes in the 24/25 Parliamentary season (2nd September 2024 - 22nd July 2025) and examined the proportion of coverage granted to each political party. This totalled 1,001 slots filled by 508 different political guests. 624 – 62.3% in total – of these slots were filled by politicians. Our analysis considered the degree to which different political parties were represented across all panel and debate programmes, the appearances of individual politicians, as well as analysing any shifts in coverage over time between September 2024 and July 2025.
Findings
Graph 1 presents the proportion of appearances by politicians in relation to the number of each party’s MPs and their total vote share in the 2024 General Election. To ensure direct comparability, politicians without UK party affiliations were excluded (41 foreign politicians and 11 crossbench peers).
Our analysis revealed that broadcasters allocated the most airtime to Labour and Conservative politicians in panel and debate programming, making up 77.1% of appearances by politicians. Labour accounted for 39% (222) of all parties, which was considerably lower than the proportion of MPs elected in the 2024 election (63.2%), but slightly higher than its total vote share (33.7%).
By comparison, Conservatives made up 38.1% (217) of politicians appearing on panel and debate programming, which was almost double the proportion of MPs they had elected in 2025 (18.6%) and more than their total vote share (23.7%).
In contrast, the third parties were underrepresented compared to their vote share. Reform UK was the most significantly underrepresented, making up only 4.7% (27) of politicians, despite gaining a total vote share of 14.3%. The Liberal Democrats and Greens were also underrepresented, making up 8.6% (49) and 3.7% (21) of guests, respectively, against a 12.2% and 6.7% vote share.
When taking into account trends in survey data from the 2024/2025 Parliamentary season, we identified starker differences in how often parties appear in panel and debate programmes compared to their performance in the polls.
According to recent aggregate poll data (see Graph 2), the Labour Party consistently led the polls to the end of 2024. However, since the start of 2025, Reform UK has been challenging this lead and, from late March, has become the most popular party nationally, with 28.9% support in June. The Liberal Democrats remained broadly consistent between roughly 11% and 13%, as did the Greens, with a slight shift from 8% to just under 10% between January and June 2025. Yet both parties’ level of support in opinion poll ratings is proportionately higher than the degree to which they appear in debate and panel programming across UK broadcast media.
Overall, our findings suggest that when broadcasters make impartial judgements about guest selection on political panel and debate programming, they appear to prioritise historical electoral support for the two major parties – namely Labour and the Conservatives – above total vote share or the latest opinion polls. This raises the question of whether broadcasters have adequately reflected the growing levels of support for third parties, such as Reform UK, the Liberal Democrats, and the Greens.
Recent public opinion data and electoral performance
In order to consider any shifts in party political representation across panel and debate programmes over time, we produced a comparison of party prominence in the final quarter of 2024 and the first half of 2025 (see Graph 3) along with a line graph showing party prominence month by month throughout the 24/25 Parliamentary season (see Graph 4). By comparing points over time, we can assess whether broadcasters were reflecting shifting public opinion polls (for example, taking into account the rising popularity of Reform UK in 2025), or taking into account electoral performance in the regional and local elections in May 2025.
Graphs 3 and 4 suggest that broadcasters have somewhat taken into account growing public support for Reform UK and the party’s strong performance in the regional and local elections. In the last quarter of 2024, Reform UK made up just 2.5% of guests, at a similar level to the Green Party, a party with a similar level of Parliamentary representation but much lower overall public support. In 2025, Reform UK appearances more than doubled to 5.9%.
Reform UK’s airtime first spiked to 8.9% of guests in January 2025, the first month the party went ahead of the Conservatives in aggregate opinion polls. After a drop to 1.8% in February 2025, Reform UK coverage levels out at around 6-8% for the remainder of 2025. During April to July, the party were allocated similar levels of coverage to the Liberal Democrats.
During regional and local election campaigning in April 2025, the Liberal Democrats, Reform UK and the Green Party were allocated the same amount of airtime in debate and panel programming. This perhaps reflects broadcasters ensuring they provide equal opportunities for third parties to appear in debate and panel programming ahead of the elections.
Meanwhile, the proportion of slots granted to Conservative politicians fell from 41.6% in 2024 to 36.4% in 2025. This reduction in airtime could be due to a number of factors. First, the prominence of Conservative airtime was inflated during the party’s leadership contest in late 2024, which resulted in panels featuring multiple Tories debating each other. For example, Conservative politicians featured more than any other party throughout September 2024. Given this context, a decline in prominence after the leadership ballot was complete would be expected. Second, given the fall in Conservatives appearing on panel and debate programming fell most from March 2025 – the same time third party prominence increased ahead of the election – this perhaps also reflects the Tories’ declining level of support in the latest trends in opinion poll data. Nonetheless, despite fewer Conservative politicians appearing in coverage, overall they receive substantially more airtime than those from third parties.
Taken together, our findings provide some evidence that broadcasters consider the latest opinion poll data and the most recent local electoral performances when making impartial judgements about the representation of politicians in debate and panel programming. We now look more closely at guest selection across each programme analysed.
Guest selection broken down by programme
When guest selection is broken down by programme, our analysis shows Question Time most closely reflects the popular vote but is still some distance from accurately reflecting the total share of votes across parties (see Graph 5). By contrast, Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips is most focused on balancing the two major parties – Labour and the Conservatives – offering limited appearances from politicians from the so-called minor parties despite their large collective vote share at the last election.
Graph 5 further reveals that the Liberal Democrats received minimal coverage on non-BBC programmes. On Peston, for example, they made up 5.1% (5) of political guests. On Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, the Liberal Democrats accounted for 4.1% (5) of politicians appearing. Other parties also received limited coverage. Plaid Cymru received no representation on either Peston or Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips. The Scottish National Party made up just 2% (2) of political guests on Peston and 1.6% (2) on Sunday with Trevor Phillips. Despite being flagship UK political programmes, these shows primarily focused on Westminster politics, limiting the perspectives of parties from the devolved nations.
The most prominent politicians
The final part of our analysis examined the number of appearances by individual politicians from different parties on debate and panel programming. Table 1 shows the most prominent politicians who appeared for each party throughout 2024 and 2025, while Table 2 lists the top ten politicians who featured the most overall.
Our findings show appearances by Labour politicians were split between a range of senior cabinet ministers. As is typically the case for the sitting PM, Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, only appeared in a handful of high profile set-piece interviews at pivotal political moments – including in an episode of Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on 2nd March 2025 focused on the war in Ukraine following Zelensky’s confrontation in the Oval Office with Trump – alongside interviews with leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch and Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey.
Appearances by Conservative politicians also primarily included senior shadow cabinet members. However, the party concentrated on a few key representatives, such as Chris Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary, who was the most commonly featured politician throughout 2024 and 2025 across all parties. Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader since November 2024, was also highly visible in broadcast coverage. In terms of the frequency of appearances, Badenoch and Labour’s Wes Streeting were joint second in debate and panel programming between 2024 and 2025.
Liberal Democrat appearances were mainly of its Leader, Ed Davey and Deputy Leader, Daisy Cooper. Most Reform UK appearances were by its Deputy Leader, Richard Tice. Contrary to long-standing claims that Nigel Farage is allocated more frequent appearances than other politicians on programmes such as Question Time, we found he appeared just five times across all UK debate and panel programmes between 2024 and 2025 (this could be related to reports that the Reform UK leader was boycotting the show in 2024). This could also be interpreted as an attempt by Reform UK to distance itself from the popular perception of being a single-personality party by increasing the visibility of senior party figures other than Farage – namely Richard Tice and Zia Yusuf. Farage had fewer appearances on debate and panel programmes than the Co-Leader of the Green Party, Carla Denyer, during our sample period and did not even make our list of the top ten most frequent appearances. Perhaps to counter speculation that Farage too often appears on Question Time, Fiona Bruce, the anchor of the programme, introduced Reform UK’s Leader in the following way:
“Making his second appearance as a panellist since 2019 is Nigel Farage.”
No other politician in any of the debate and panel programmes we analysed throughout 2024 and 2025 had the number of their past appearances mentioned.
Overall, our analysis shows that guests from third parties on panel and debate programming tend to be a handful of party figureheads, most strikingly in the case of the Liberal Democrats. The major parties, Labour especially, spread their number of representatives more widely across senior Cabinet Ministers. As a result, while third parties are collectively less visible than major parties on political panel and debate programming, their figureheads are some of the most prominent individual politicians.
What conclusions can be drawn?
There are several ways our research can be interpreted. But two initial points need to be stated. First, it should be acknowledged that debate and panel programmes do not represent all broadcasters’ political output. Each broadcaster – the BBC, ITV, and Sky News – features a wide range of high-quality political news and current affairs coverage across its TV, radio, online, and social media channels. Unfortunately, it is well beyond the scope of our resources to examine all of this output. Nonetheless, we believe analysing debate and panel programmes alone is a worthy study in its own right, given their agenda-setting power. Secondly, we do not believe our findings constitute a breach of due impartiality from any of the broadcasters. Ofcom makes it clear that broadcasters have the editorial freedom to make impartial judgments about selecting party political representatives in news and current affairs programming based on a range of criteria. As we have outlined, this can range from representing party political views based on vote share and seats won at the last general election, to the performance of recent local and regional electoral contests, and the latest trends in opinion polls. Since broadcasters have the autonomy to interpret due impartiality based on these factors, there will inevitably be differences in the selection of parties and politicians across different programmes.
We believe our analysis over the course of the 2024/25 Parliamentary season offers one way of understanding how broadcasters interpreted the broad criteria of due impartiality when selecting political guests to appear in panel and debate programming. Taken together, our study suggests that broadcasters gave more weight to selecting politicians from parties based on the number of seats won at the last general election than to other factors, such as vote share, the latest electoral performance at a local and regional level, or recent trends in public opinion data. In doing so, it could be argued that this favours the two historically large parties, Labour and the Conservatives, and limits opportunities for third parties such as Reform UK, the Liberal Democrats, and Greens.
At the same time, giving greater weight to Labour and Conservative politicians in panel and debate programming above other parties could be viewed as the most accurate reflection of the UK’s first past the post electoral system. After all, the public votes for constituency politicians, and the party with the largest number of MPs forms a government, while the second-largest party becomes the official opposition. If broadcasters applied more weight to vote share when selecting politicians, it would arguably better reflect proportional political systems where the overall amount of votes helps determine the electoral outcome. This is the case in the devolved elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which may require broadcasters across the nations to interpret due impartiality differently from the UK’s first past the post electoral system.
In terms of impartially selecting politicians to appear in panel and debate programming based on the most recent electoral performances and the latest public opinion data, our analysis suggests broadcasters were responding to Reform UK’s rise in the polls and successful electoral performance in the regional and local elections. They appeared more in 2025 – when they topped many polls and were the best performing party in the local and regional electoral contests – than in the last few months of 2024 when Labour and the Conservatives were more dominant in the polls and had just collectively secured the most votes and MPs in the July general election.
Of course, in the years ahead, opinion polls may change in line with the electoral performance of parties. For example, the devolved elections scheduled for May 2026 may result in a wide range of political parties gaining seats in Scotland and Wales. Responding to new electoral outcomes and shifts in public opinion, broadcasters could reconsider their approach to impartially selecting party political representatives in debate and panel programming. We also found little evidence to support claims that Farage was one of the most regularly featured guests on debate and panel programming throughout 2024 and 2025. The top ten politicians that appeared in coverage were actually made up of senior Labour and Conservative Cabinet Ministers, as well as the new Tory Leader, Reform UK’s Deputy Leader and The Liberal Democrats Leader and Deputy Leader.
Stay tuned and sign up to our research updates because we will be continuing to monitor broadcast and online output over the coming years to better understand how broadcasters make impartial judgements.