Brexiteer peter bone outraged by 'biased' channel 4 - 'anti-boris'

The veteran Eurosceptic unleashed his fury to TalkRADIO’s Mike Graham, claiming the network was undermining the fact that Conservative members ultimately elect the new leader. He said of

Sunday night’s debate: “I forced myself to watch it and I thought two things. I thought it was incredibly dull and I thought the audience was completely - well I doubt you’d find a

Conservative in the audience. “It was a really biased audience. “It’s supposed to be Conservative members who are going to elect the new leader. “They said they were supposed to be

Conservative-leaning in the audience, which it certainly wasn’t. “Channel 4 has a reputation for being anti-Conservative and anti-Boris. “And it lived up to that entirely. “It’s so clearly

anti-Conservative, so clearly anti-Brexit, so clearly anti-Boris. “I think it was right for him not to turn up. “Channel 4 is clearly biased, unfortunately.” A spokesman for Channel 4 denied

the audience was biased against any individual MP. He said: "Survation recruited an audience of floating voters who were open to voting Conservative and who fairly reflected the Brexit

issue. "This was a live debate and each candidate participated fully. "Fairness and due impartiality in political debates are not dictated by an arithmetic calculation of airtime.

Each candidate had a fair opportunity to participate." Mr Bone's frustration came in anticipation of a second Tory leadership debate tomorrow that will take place on the BBC. Tory

leadership hopefuls Rory Stewart and Sajid Javid believe they have the required number of supporters to survive Tuesday's second round of voting. Mr Stewart managed to secure just 19

votes in the first ballot and Mr Javid had 23 - both short of the 33 required to stay in the race after the second vote. But they told journalists at a special hustings in Westminster that

they were confident of remaining in the contest to be the next prime minister. They are a long way short of frontrunner Boris Johnson, who picked up 114 votes last week and has since been

boosted by the support of former leadership contender Matt Hancock. Former foreign secretary Mr Johnson did not appear at the hustings event for political journalists and was notably absent

from the first TV debate on Channel 4 on Sunday. But his campaign continued to gain ground with the support of Mr Hancock, which came as a blow to Environment Secretary Michael Gove - who

had courted his endorsement. At the hustings, Mr Stewart said he had the necessary 33 backers to make it through the second round of voting in the contest "if they do what they

say".