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Actor

1976-08-08 · Rome · Female

2 series in the catalog

Laura Juliet Kuenssberg (born 8 August 1976) is a Scottish journalist and television presenter. She was the political editor of BBC News from 2015 to 2022, and was the first woman to hold the position. She has since presented the BBC's weekend political discussion programme Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

Kuenssberg previously served as the BBC's chief political correspondent and was the first business editor of ITV News. She was also the chief correspondent for Newsnight between February 2014 and July 2015.

Early life and education

Laura Juliet Kuenssberg was born in Rome, Italy, on 8 August 1976 to Scottish parents Nick and Sally Kuenssberg. She grew up in Kelvinside, Glasgow, with her brother and sister, and attended Laurel Bank School before going on to study history at the University of Edinburgh, where she graduated with a first-class honours degree and an MA. During her degree she spent a year studying at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., U.S., where she interned at NBC.

Her Edinburgh-born father, Nick Kuenssberg, was a businessman, investor and academic; and her mother, Sally Kuenssberg, worked in children's services and received an OBE for this in the 2000 New Year Honours. Her paternal grandfather was German-born Ekkehard von Kuenssberg (CBE), a co-founder and president of the Royal College of General Practitioners. Her maternal grandfather was Lord Robertson, a judge of the Scots High Court of Justiciary, whose brother James Wilson Robertson was the last British Governor-General of Nigeria. Her elder brother, David, was an executive director of finance and resources at Brighton and Hove City Council and is now the Director General, Corporate & Delivery for the Home Office. Her elder sister, Joanna Kuenssberg, is an oil executive for Shell and a former diplomat who has served as high commissioner to Mozambique.

Career

Kuenssberg won the regional Royal Television Society "Most Promising Newcomer" award in 2001 while working as home affairs correspondent for BBC North East and Cumbria.

In 2009, she was appointed chief political correspondent for the BBC. Kuenssberg reported for BBC One bulletins, Daily Politics and the BBC News channel. In May 2010, her presence on BBC Television was so ubiquitous in the period between the 2010 United Kingdom general election and the formation of the Cameron–Clegg coalition that journalist David Aaronovitch coined the term "Kuenssbergovision".

Kuenssberg took up the newly created role of business editor for ITV News. She also contributed towards business reporting on ITV's current affairs strand, Tonight.

On 12 November 2013, it was announced that she would leave ITV to return to the BBC as chief correspondent and a presenter of Newsnight, replacing Gavin Esler in the latter role. She joined the Newsnight team in February 2014.

Between the 2017 United Kingdom general election and Brexit in 2020, Kuenssberg also co-presented the BBC's Brexitcast podcast alongside Katya Adler, Adam Fleming and Chris Mason, which was then retitled as the Newscast podcast.

In September 2023, Kuenssberg presented Laura Kuenssberg: State of Chaos; a three-part political documentary series, which was broadcast on BBC2.

Kuenssberg was the host of the BBC's election-night coverage for the 2024 United Kingdom general election alongside Clive Myrie.

BBC political editor

In July 2015, Kuenssberg was appointed the BBC's political editor, becoming the first woman to hold the position. In January 2016, she was involved in arranging for the Labour MP Stephen Doughty to publicly announce his resignation as a shadow foreign office minister on Daily Politics. The incident was the subject of an official complaint from Seumas Milne, the Labour Party's director of communications, which was rejected by Robbie Gibb, then the BBC's head of live political programmes.

In December 2016, Kuenssberg said a source had told her that the Queen had made comments supportive of leaving the European Union during a private lunch at Windsor Castle. She initially decided not to report the comments because the BBC generally requires a story to have two sources before it can run.

During a joint press conference with the prime minister Theresa May and Donald Trump, when the latter was in his first term as president of the United States, Kuenssberg recalled a number of controversial statements Trump had made about his proposed travel ban during the 2016 United States presidential election, asking Trump if he had anything to say to British viewers "worried about you becoming the leader of the free world?" Trump responded, "That's your choice of a question?" He then remarked to May: "There goes that relationship."

In March 2019, Kuenssberg presented a documentary, The Brexit Storm: Laura Kuenssberg's Inside Story, for BBC Two. Her role in the reporting of Brexit negotiations was the subject of an article in The Times Magazine of 30 March 2019.

On Wednesday, 11 December 2019, while reporting on the 2019 United Kingdom general election, Kuenssberg was accused of breaking electoral law by stating that postal ballots painted a "grim" picture for Labour. The reporter told viewers that day that while parties were not supposed to look at voting papers when they were verified – but not counted – at opening sessions, they did "get a hint" of how they were doing and it was not looking good for Labour. The accusation made was that the Representation of the People Act 1983 had been broken, as it lays out that "no person shall, in the case of an election to which this section applies, publish before the poll is closed [...] any statement relating to the way in which voters have voted at the election where that statement is (or might reasonably be taken to be) based on information given by voters after they have voted, or b) any forecast as to the result of the election which is (or might reasonably be taken to be) based on information so given." The BBC, though, denied that Kuenssberg had violated the law. Ultimately Kuenssberg was in fact cleared of all wrongdoing.

On 17 December 2019, she presented a second documentary film, The Brexit Storm Continues: Laura Kuenssberg's Inside Story, which covered Boris Johnson's arrival at 10 Downing Street through to the 2019 general election.

On 20 December 2021, Kuenssberg announced that she would be stepping down as political editor, effective in the spring of 2022, to take "a senior presenting and reporting role" at the BBC. The Guardian reported that she was in talks to become a presenter on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. It was suggested that Jon Sopel could take over the role of political editor in her place, leaving his role as the BBC's North America editor, but in February 2022 he left the BBC to join LBC. In the event Chris Mason was announced to be the next BBC political editor.

In March 2022, it was announced that Kuenssberg would be replacing Andrew Marr, in a full-time role, as the host of BBC One's flagship Sunday morning politics show, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, starting in September 2022.

Accusations of bias

Following the 2016 local elections, a petition was started on 38 Degrees accusing Kuenssberg of being biased against the Labour Party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn. The group called for her dismissal. The petition was later withdrawn by David Babbs, executive director of 38 Degrees, who said it had become a "focal point for sexist and hateful abuse made towards Laura Kuenssberg" on other social media websites such as Twitter, although he said that this represented "the actions of a small minority".

In January 2017, the BBC Trust ruled that a report in November 2015 by Kuenssberg broke the broadcaster's impartiality and accuracy guidelines. A viewer had complained about her item, which featured an interview with Corbyn on the BBC News at Six which gave the incorrect impression that Corbyn disagreed with the use of firearms by police in incidents such as that month's terrorist attacks…