Sir Keir Starmer has been urged to intervene in the row between Donald Trump and the BBC after the US President ramped up threats to sue the corporation.
Speaking to reporters on board Air Force One on Friday night, Mr Trump said he would sue the corporation for “anywhere between 1 billion dollars (£759.8 million) and 5 billion dollars (£3.79 billion), probably sometime next week” after the BBC apologised over the Panorama speech edit.
Mr Trump also said that Sir Keir had asked to speak to him, and indicated that they would talk over the weekend.
The prime minister has now been urged to “demand” that Mr Trump “drops his ludicrous lawsuit” with the BBC, with Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey saying Sir Keir has a moment to “stand up for Britain”.
He said on Saturday: “This is Keir Starmer’s moment to stand up for Britain, for every TV licence fee payer in the country and for a free press that can hold the powerful to account.
“When he speaks to Trump, Keir Starmer must demand that he drops his ludicrous lawsuit and stops interfering in our country.
“The prime minister has spent months cosying up to the president. If he can’t stop him attacking one of our most precious institutions and hitting millions of licence fee payers in the pocket, what was it all for?”
On Thursday, the BBC said the edit of Mr Trump’s speech on January 6 2021 had given the “mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action”.
The broadcaster apologised and said the splicing of the speech was an “error of judgment” but refused to pay financial compensation after the president’s lawyers threatened to sue for one billion dollars in damages unless a retraction and apology were published.
Chair Samir Shah sent a personal letter to the White House to apologise for the editing, and lawyers for the corporation wrote to the president’s legal team, a BBC spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added: “While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim.”
The programme, broadcast a week before the 2024 US election results, spliced two clips together so that Mr Trump appeared to tell the crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
The broadcaster said it will not air the Panorama episode Trump: A Second Chance? again, and published a retraction on the show’s webpage on Thursday.
Mr Trump had previously said he had an “obligation” to launch a billion-dollar lawsuit against the broadcaster, claiming that the BBC had “defrauded the public”.
The BBC is not the first media organisation Mr Trump has had a dispute with.
In July, US media giant Paramount agreed to pay Mr Trump 16 million dollars (£13.5 million) to settle a lawsuit over a 2024 CBS interview with Ms Harris, the former vice-president and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee.
It comes at the end of the week which saw two of the BBC’s most senior executives resign over the scandal: director general Tim Davie, and news chief Deborah Turness.
