BBC News presenter Martine Croxall pulled from air over ‘glee’ at Boris Johnson dropout

There must be something in the water here in London at the moment: people are dropping like flies.

Penny Mordaunt dropped out of the Tory leadership race at the eleventh hour, Boris Johnson did the same the night before, and now BBC News has dropped (temporarily, at least) one of its presenters over her reaction to this bizarre circus.

Martine Croxall has been taken off air over her openly “gleeful” response to the former PM’s announcement that he wouldn’t be running for Number 10 after all.

Croxall was introducing Sunday night’s edition of The Papers when, beaming, she declared: “Well this is all very exciting, isn’t it?” adding: “Am I allowed to be this gleeful? Well I am.”

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The programme, in which members of the press and experts analyse the main stories of the day, began just an hour and a half after Johnson pulled out of the contest to be the next Prime Minister.

In her first question to her guests, Croxall also remarked: “Can we even show you the front pages just yet, have they arrived? No they haven’t arrived.

“It’s all a little bit, you know, lastminute.com isn’t it? Because all the front pages were probably out of date by the time we received them.”

Croxall did acknowledge during the session that her comments could have breached BBC guidelines.

Responding to a guest’s joke aimed at Johnson, she said: “I shouldn’t probably (laugh). I’m probably breaking some terrible due impartiality rule by giggling.”

No kidding.

Several Tory MPs were among those to complain about Croxall’s behaviour after a clip of the show went viral on Twitter.

Meanwhile, others appreciated Croxall's Christmas-has-come-early approach:

BBC News responded to the controversy on Monday with a statement saying it was “urgently reviewing last night’s edition of The Papers on the News Channel for a potential breach of impartiality.”

It added: “It is imperative that we maintain the highest editorial standards. We have processes in place to uphold our standards, and these processes have been activated.”

At least we're still allowed to be gleeful that Johnson isn't the PM and won't be until at least... November.

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