GB News outcasts take fight for the Right on to YouTube
'We are increasingly becoming an authoritarian state where dissident voices are taken down by wholesale abuses of the political and legal system,' he declared in the first episode of his Outspoken show last year.
Wootton, who claims his daily broadcast provides news and opinion with 'no spin, no bias and no censorship', is not alone in moving to the platform. He has been joined by a number of other former GB News presenters – as well as a wider group of alt-Right figures – attempting to wield power over Britain's Right through their own media ventures.
It is a tactic that has enjoyed remarkable success in Trump's America. But as UK news outlets move ever further into opinion-led programming and maintain their hold over audiences, can this new breed of influencers repeat the trick here?
Wootton, a New Zealand-born former senior editor at The Sun, now has more than 334,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, which is sponsored by anti-ageing supplements and an underwear brand. He also clips up excerpts of his show on TikTok.
Credit: YouTube/ Dan Wootton Outspoken
He is currently embroiled in a High Court case over allegations that he 'catfished' a former colleague and tricked them into sending explicit images by pretending to be a woman.
Other GB News figures have followed suit.
Laurence Fox and Calvin Robinson, who were also ousted from the broadcaster in the wake of sexist remarks made by Fox on Wootton's show, have established YouTube channel Reclaim The Media, which they describe as an 'antidote to our biased MSM'.
After being ejected from the airwaves, these figures have joined a small but vocal group of online influencers attempting to influence Right-wing British politics.
Carl Benjamin, who also uses the pseudonym Sargon of Akkad, has been a prominent figure on YouTube in recent years and in 2020 set up Lotus Eaters, which now hosts Robinson's Common Sense Crusade show.
Triggernometry, a self-proclaimed free speech channel set up by comedians Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster, has racked up more than 1.3m subscribers, while more recently Reform has been attempting to boost its youth support base through 22-year-old activist and TikTok influencer Nicholas Lissack.
In many ways, the shift online is a facsimile of the step change in US media, where the alt-Right has gained ground since Donald Trump's first administration. This has only accelerated with his second term in office as close ally Elon Musk has used his ownership of X to turn the social media platform into a Maga mouthpiece.
Podcasters such as Joe Rogan played a crucial role in determining the outcome of the 2024 election, particularly by harnessing the support of young men.
The influence exerted by these figures is now such that Tim Pool, a pro-Trump podcaster accused of taking money from Russia to promote Kremlin propaganda, was this week granted a question at a White House press briefing, even as established outlets such as the Associated Press have been excluded.
Would-be British influencers are now trying to mimic the trend as they capitalise on what they view as dwindling trust in conventional media outlets.
'The appeal is the same as you're seeing in the US. It's this distrust of traditional media amongst a particular group of people,' says Nic Newman, at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
'And now the ability to listen to somebody who you identify with, whose view you share and is representing things that previously wouldn't have been seen on mainstream TV.'
There are other motivations for moving online as audiences increasingly ditch traditional TV. Piers Morgan last year quit Rupert Murdoch's TalkTV to pursue his own show on YouTube, describing his nightly broadcast slot as a 'straitjacket'.
But for the GB News rejects and other alt-Right figures, the move to social media reflects a desire to exert influence over the political right with viewpoints that would not be allowed on regulated broadcast TV.
Wootton, who was also sacked as a columnist by the Daily Mail, frequently launches personal attacks on Sir Keir Starmer and his wife. He has criticised Farage's 'tack to the centre', suggesting he should take a harder line on Islam, and called for 'some kind of union' on the Right.
On Reclaim The Media, Fox and Robinson similarly accused Farage of trying to 'appease' Islam, while branding the Reform leader the 'wokest politician in Westminster'.
In a monologue on Triggernometry this week, Kisin branded the trans debate 'quite possibly the most insane manifestation of woke ideology we've seen'.
Credit: YouTube/ Reclaim The Media
Former prime minister Liz Truss, meanwhile, has gone further, announcing plans to launch her own social media platform, claiming that the mainstream media and 'deep state' were stifling free speech.
But while the proliferation of online media and influencers undoubtedly helped to catapult Trump into the White House, can these fringe figures exert as much influence in Britain?
Media analyst Alex DeGroote points out that these UK personalities have a 'comparatively tiny' following compared to the likes of Joe Rogan, who has almost 20m subscribers on YouTube and pulls in 50m listeners per episode to his podcast.
'Their guests are a lot less high profile than Rogan, and he has also had the sponsorship of Spotify,' DeGroote adds.
Research by the Reuters Institute last year revealed that established media brands such as the BBC and Sky still gain the most attention on social media in the UK and are more likely to be challenged on YouTube and TikTok by smaller upstarts like PoliticsJoe and LadBible than by influencers or personalities.
Among individuals, the two most frequently mentioned accounts last year were those of LBC's James O'Brien and ITV political editor Robert Peston, suggesting that Britons still gravitate towards journalists at traditional media outlets.
This trend underscores the continued power of Britain's public service broadcasting system. The latest industry survey by Ofcom showed that, while in decline, BBC One remains the country's most popular individual news source.
At the same time, commercial outlets such as GB News and LBC have expanded further into opinion-led programming, while podcasts including The News Agents and The Rest is Politics have scooped up large audiences seeking news and current affairs in a less staid format.
'I think we're definitely seeing the same trends towards personality-led opinion because it's cheap and the algorithms really support it,' says Newman of the Reuters Institute. 'But it's just happening to a much smaller extent here because the news brands are much stronger.'
There are cultural differences, too. In the US, many of these social media influencers are effectively cheerleaders for Trump.
In Britain, by contrast, this new breed of alt-Right influencers espouse an incoherent array of beliefs, united by little beyond a tendency towards anti-government and anti-establishment viewpoints.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the tides are shifting. Having been the main source for news since the 1960s, TV has now been dethroned as Britons are just as likely to access information through online news sites and apps. And with a younger generation brought up on social media, this trend seems likely to continue.
As a result, DeGroote argues that there is room in the UK media landscape for Right-wing personalities to escape their current niche and break out into the mainstream.
'The Rest is Politics and The News Agents are successful podcasts and clearly partisan on the Left wing,' he says. 'There is a gap in the market, but the offerings need to be more muscular to attract younger guys.'
To date, UK politics has not suffered the same levels of polarisation as across the pond. But as debate rages on in key political battlegrounds such as immigration and trans rights, Britain's new breed of alt-Right influencers show no sign of quietening down.
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