Fiona Bruce has been accused of “shutting down” attempts from Zack Polanski to challenge Reform’s Zia Yusuf over his party’s links to Nathan Gill.
Last month, Nathan Gill, pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery between 6 December 2018 and 18 July 2019. The former Reform Wales leader admitted taking bribes to make statements in favour of Russia while a Member of the European Parliament.
During this week’s edition of Question Time, Green Party leader Polanski tried to get some answers from Reform’s head of policy Yusuf over links between Gill and Reform leader Nigel Farage.
READ NEXT: Deafening applause as Zia Yusuf shut down by Zack Polanski on Question Time
Yusuf and some senior members of the party have denied knowing who Gill is. However, Polanski highlighted how Gill had been stood behind Farage in a picture taken on the day after the Brexit referendum in 2016.
Yusuf denied ever meeting Gill, but Polanski continued to ask specifically about how well Farage knew him.
However, during the debate, host Fiona Bruce interjected to bring the conversation to an end, suggesting that people in the audience weren’t interested in the topic.
“I think there’s other things that the audience want to talk about,” she said.
On social media, some have accused Bruce of ‘shutting down’ the debate.
One person wrote: “Fiona Bruce said that the audience and public didn’t want to press Reform UK on their dodgy links to Russia. I disagree. Retweet if you agree it’s in the public interest for Reform to explain about their links to Russian money and bribery!”
Someone else who seemed to have their suspicions was John Cleese, who said the exchange was “fishy.”
When asked by BBC Wales if he knew anything about pro-Russian statements made in the past by Gill, Farage said he didn’t.
He told the broadcaster: “I didn’t know anything about it, all I knew was that he’d been to Ukraine.”
“I told him not to go, he defied me and went, I was completely unaware of any statements that he made.”
Gill was one of seven UKIP politicians elected to the Welsh Senedd in 2016 when the party was led by Farage.