Boris Johnson is taking a paid job as a presenter for GB News, joining Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage on the rightwing channel. The former prime minister was announced as a presenter on Friday. GB News said he would play a key role in the channel’s coverage of the UK general election and the US elections next year. His salary was not disclosed, but he is likely to receive a six-figure sum. Rees-Mogg is paid £350,000 a year and the Tory deputy chair, Lee Anderson, gets £100,000 a year from the channel. GB News is jointly owned by the hedge fund manager Sir Paul Marshall and Legatum, a Dubai-based investment firm co-founded by the GB News chair, Alan McCormick. Marshall is said to be putting together a bid to buy the Daily Telegraph, a former employer of Johnson. Johnson joins the channel after a difficult period for the broadcaster, which last month suspended the presenters Dan Wootton and Laurence Fox. Fox had made misogynistic comments on a show hosted by Wootton, who did not challenge the remarks. GB News has repeatedly refused to investigate Wootton over separate, unrelated allegations that he used the pseudonym Martin Branning to send sexually explicit messages to former colleagues, which he denies. Johnson already earns a high six-figure sum as a columnist for the Daily Mail, and has made millions of pounds on the speaking circuit since he was ousted from No 10 more than a year ago. In a video posted on the GB News account on X, formerly Twitter, Johnson said he was going to be sharing his “unvarnished views” on the TV channel. He said: “I am excited to say that I am shortly going to be joining you on GB News. I’m going to be giving this remarkable new TV channel my unvarnished views on everything from Russia, China, the war in Ukraine, how we meet all those challenges, to the huge opportunities that lie ahead for us, why I believe our best days are yet to come. And why on the whole the people of the world want to see more ‘global Britain’, not less.”
The channel has risen in prominence through big-name political hires from the right including Farage, Rees-Mogg and Anderson. It also employs the married Tory MPs Philip Davies and Esther McVey. Johnson obtained approval for the role from Whitehall’s appointments watchdog before taking up the job. The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba) said it did not have any “particular concerns”. It had previously rebuked Johnson for failing to consult it before he announced his job at the Mail. The Mail unveiled Johnson as a columnist in June and said his first column would appear at 5pm that day, only a day after a report found he had deliberately misled the Commons over the Partygate scandal and had been part of a campaign to intimidate the MPs who investigated him. Since then, he has written for the Mail on subjects ranging from his use of a weight loss “wonder drug” to the war in the Ukraine. Johnson’s presenting slot will keep him in the public eye and give him a platform to air his views at a difficult time for Rishi Sunak, who is trying to turn around his fortunes in the polls. Rees-Mogg, an ally of Johnson’s, said this week that he thought the party had been wrong to get rid of him as prime minister given his winning electoral mandate from 2019. Johnson is likely to be back in the headlines in the coming weeks over his role in the pandemic as the Covid inquiry turns its attention to political decision-making.