Laura Kuenssberg back on TV with BBC's flagship political show

Yesterday, Laura Kuenssberg marked history in television broadcasting as the first woman to be at the helm of a Sunday morning show about politics. After stepping down as BBC political editor at Easter last year, the 46-year-old host has made her comeback to screens, taking stewardship of BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

Laura Kuenssberg made history

This is not the first time that an anchorwoman has hosted a program, as Sophie Raworth has recently replaced Andrew Marr to manage BBC One's flagship Sunday morning program. However, it is different for the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg since it is the first show having the name of a female MC marked on his title.

How did the show go?

If the production team wants to make a change before next Sunday, even if the chances are small, it should be to promptly remove the espresso machine, as sarcastically noted by The Herald. The tone swung all over the place, with interviews on Ukraine and the energy crisis sitting uneasily alongside the late-night, laid-back attitude of Brexit cast and The Last Leg. The word ‘over-caffeinated’ barely begins to capture the feeling.

Moreover, the way the show looked was not so aesthetic as the decorations and the graphics were so vibrant and colorful, which was contrasting with a black sparkly dress and the pink trouser suit that Kuenssberg wore on stage and in the credits respectively.

The ridiculous 'panel'

Nothing on the screen was as disconcerting as 'the panel', which included comedian Joe Lycett, whom Kuenssberg described as ‘not on the left or the right’, Cleo Watson, former deputy chief of staff to Boris Johnson, Emily Thornberry, a Labour MP, and Emily Thornberry, the shadow attorney general.

The audiences have got used to the ‘gotcha’ tricks that Lycett, a familiar face on Channel 4, has always staged to embarrass people in power. Did any production team member feel normal with this spoof merchant? If they did, what boosted them to make him the host for this Sunday show?

When Lycett gave Kuenssberg and her guest Liz Truss applause and whooped on the other side of the studio, during an interview, the MC was so taken aback. Kuenssberg jokingly gushed: ‘I’ll let you calm down a bit before I come to you.'

However, it was just the beginning of all the stunts that Lycett was about to perform. ‘You said earlier that I’m not left, right, or right wing. I’m very right-wing, and I loved it,’, he said sarcastically.

This was not something that Kuenssberg had expected to be 'a bit of fun’ on her show.

On the first program, the meetings with Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak were meant to be a coup, but none of them revealed anything fresh, and the election for Tory leadership had come to an end anyway. Ms. Truss's ambiguous declaration that she will announce the energy problem within a week was disappointing, to say the least.

A Sunday show's primary goal is to develop a story that will guide the news for the remainder of the day and be posted in Monday's newspapers. Unfortunately, for Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the show was canceled before it even began. According to Sky News's Sophy Ridge, Nicola Sturgeon said that Liz Truss would be 'a disaster' as Prime Minister if she managed the exact way she had campaigned.

Scotland’s First Minister also fueled the fire in her fight with Ms. Truss, who had nicknamed Ms. Sturgeon an ‘attention seeker’. On one of her many appearances, she explained to the public that Ms. Truss had followed her for advice on having a page on Vogue.

Ms. Sturgeon also mentioned that she was more than happy to establish a working relationship with Ms. Truss, just as she had done with Boris Johnson, Theresa May, and David Cameron. She admitted:

‘I’m not perfect. I’m not saying that I’m blameless when those relationships go through difficulties, but I will try to build that relationship.’

In reply to being said as an ‘attention seeker’, she shared:

‘I don’t mean this pejoratively, but I’ve never looked at Liz Truss and thought that she was some kind of shrinking violet. That’s not a criticism. In politics, that’s part of the job you have to do.’

Read more:

⋙ Laura Kuenssberg: What is she doing now

⋙ Race for UK PM: Who are the contenders and who is winning?