Xmas party row: Laura Kuenssberg says 'more heads will roll'

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Laura Kuenssberg has announced she is stepping down as the BBC’s political editor. She will leave her position at Easter to take on a “senior presenting and reporting role” after almost seven years. Upon her departure, she will take on a range of news and current affairs projects across the Corporation.

Further details are due to be released next year.

On her move, Mrs Kuenssberg said: “I’ve been so lucky to do the best daily reporting job in the business, with the best colleagues anyone could wish for.

“It’s been incredible to occupy the chair during a time of such huge change and to try to make sense of it for our viewers, listeners and readers online.

“I’ll miss the daily drama, and our wonderful team in Westminster, immensely. But after nearly seven years and what feels like decades’ worth of headlines, it’s time for the next move.”

Since her appointment in 2015, Ms Kuenssberg has covered two General Elections, the Brexit referendum and chaotic aftermath, as well as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Succeeding Nick Robinson, she had previously served as the BBC’s chief political correspondent, and was the first business editor of ITV News.

According to the BBC’s annual report into the highest earners, Ms Kuenssberg earned £290,000 in 2020, a £40,000 increase from the previous year.

Speaking to the Radio Times in 2019, she admitted the turbulent political period of the last few years has been good for her.

She said: “I can’t say it’s been bad for me. Quite the opposite.”

As well as her reporting work, Ms Kuenssberg records ‘Newcast’, a weekly political chat with Adam Fleming, Katya Adler and Chris Mason.

The podcast had previously been ‘Brexitcast’, and a daily version of ‘The Coronavirus Newcast’ was launched in March 2020.

Ms Kuenssberg told the Radio Times: “I work long hours. I work very, very hard.

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“I haven’t had time for a haircut in four months. That’s where we are at the moment, I’m like Rapunzel.”

Addressing her salary, she said: “I’m well rewarded for a job I massively enjoy doing.

“I think I’m paid very fairly.”

She confessed her current role is beyond anything she could have imagined.

She recalled: “If, when I started out, someone had told me the political editor would be a) Scottish, b) a woman, and c) got the job when they were my age, I’m not sure I’d have thought that very likely.”

Ms Kuenssberg was the first female political editor of the BBC.

She continued: “It was not my burning ambition to work in Westminster, to spend all my time hanging out with people who work in politics.

“They wanted to bring in people who weren’t politics obsessives, who didn’t already have a whole network of friends and contacts in politics, which I didn’t.”

When asked if she was an ‘outsider’, she replied: “Totally!

“Okay, I get that it’s ludicrous for me to suggest that I’m an outsider, but I’m not hanging out at the weekends with members of the Shadow Cabinet, or having dinner with the chair of some select committee.”

Instead, she spends her weekends reading “brilliantly awful fiction”.

She explained: “I’m a fan of the kind of fiction that turns your head to candyfloss at the end of the day.

“If it’s 1am and you’ve had a 15-hour day, you could think, ‘I’ll just catch up on The Economist’, or I could read Jilly Cooper.”

Remaining impressively loyal to her employer, she said she loves “watching telly for telly’s sake”. Her favourite channel, she said, is BBC One or “BBC Two on a really crazy day”.

The biggest lesson she has learned in her time as the BBC’s Political Editor? “Never assume anything again.”

She admitted the scale of Theresa May’s first Brexit defeat in Parliament took her by surprise.

Though it is not yet clear who will replace her, the BBC’s Media Editor Amol Rajan has been touted as a possible successor.

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