And the most popular guest on GB News is…

Who has been the most-often booked interviewee on GB News’s primetime chat shows so far this year? The answer is… a former Labour MP you’ve almost certainly never heard of.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle, who represented Brighton Kemptown from 2017 until last year, has been the star guest on the hard right channel’s weekday evening shows an astounding 23 times since the start of the year, according to analysis by Rats in a Sack.

Russell-Moyle was ineligible to stand for Labour at the last general election after being suspended from the party over a claim about his behaviour. The complainant later withdrew the allegation. Since the start of this year the ex-MP has been the guest of Jacob Rees-Mogg 12 times, Nigel Farage 10 times and has once been on the generic GB News Tonight.

Since January, he has been one of three Labourites who top the chart of GB News’s guests on its most popular primetime shows. Second, with 18 appearances, is Matthew Laza, introduced as a “former Labour advisor”, having spent 10 months as the party’s head of broadcasting a decade ago. He has been interviewed on Patrick Christys’ show 12 times this year, Michelle Dewberry’s four times and Matthew Goodwin’s twice.

Unlike Russell-Moyle, Laza remains broadly supportive of Keir Starmer’s agenda – unlike the guest booked third most often, Barry Gardiner, a left wing MP who served in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet and who has appeared 14 times this year.

Fourth most seen is Jo Phillips, billed as a “former Lib Dem advisor”, although Ed Davey’s press team can be forgiven for not being familiar with her as she served under the leadership of Paddy Ashdown, who stepped down a full 26 years ago and died in 2018.

Further analysis throws up some unsurprising conflicts of interest. Star presenter and Reform leader Nigel Farage’s most common interviewee, after Russell-Moyle and Phillips, is Gawain Towler, a now-lobbyist who spent much of the last two decades as Farage’s spin doctor before getting the heave-ho last year as his boss sought to “professionalise” his party. Farage has also interviewed his own deputy, Richard Tice, and fellow GB News presenter Jacob Rees-Mogg, which must have been journalistic tour de forces on a par with John Freeman’s Face To Face.

Rees-Mogg, meanwhile, has interviewed no fewer than six of his former colleagues on the Conservative benches in the Commons: Suella Braverman, John Redwood (six times), Andrew Griffith, Tom Pursglove, Mark Francois and Douglas Carswell, as well as Arlene Foster, former leader of the Tories’ sister party the DUP and now, er, a presenter on GB News.

However, there has been a notable absence from the channel’s flagship weekday evening talk shows, including Dewbs and Co, Farage, Matthew Goodwin, Patrick Christys Tonight, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Lee Anderson’s Real World. None of those shows has featured a representative of the UK government or single senior Liberal Democrat, Green, SNP or Plaid Cymru figure. Maybe there’s no room in the car park with so many spaces reserved for their regulars!

GB News’s most common guests on their evening chat shows this year so far:

1 Lloyd Russell-Moyle, former Labour MP, 23 appearances

2 Matthew Laza, former Labour head of broadcast, 18

3 Barry Gardiner, Corbynite Labour MP, 14

4= Jo Phillips, former Lib Dem spinner, 13

4= Gawain Towler, Nigel Farage’s former spin doctor, 13

6 Shaun Bailey, Tory peer, former candidate for Mayor of London, 12

7 Rupert Lowe, former Reform MP, now independent, 12

8= Jake Berry, Tory Party chair for all 49 days of Liz Truss’s premiership, 10

8= Kwasi Kwarteng, chancellor for 38 days of Liz Truss’s premiership, 10

8= John Redwood, former Wales secretary, 10

8= Ann Widdecombe, Reform’s immigration spokesperson, 10