Women in Westminster: In Conversation With Beth Rigby
Beth Rigby is a political broadcaster who never loses sight of what matters most to the public. As part of our Women in Westminster series, we sat down with the Sky News' Political Editor to learn why she believes political journalism must adapt if it is to continue holding those in power to account
As Sky News’ Political Editor, Beth Rigby spends her days translating complex, fast-moving political decisions and dramas into stories that resonate with viewers. And when she finds herself face-to-face with those in power, she presses them to get the answers the public themselves might demand. It is a role she approaches with seriousness, preparation, and a strong sense of responsibility.
“I’ll spend six or seven hours preparing for a five-minute interview,” she tells Women in Westminster. “I can’t wing it. If I want to do the best job I can, I have to put the work in.”
“Putting the work in” has helped Rigby become one of the nation’s most effective interviewers, asking our political leaders questions with a disarming brutality. To any viewer watching one of her famous set-piece interviews, it might appear that any nerves on display are always on the opposite side of the table. However, Rigby is honest about the weight of responsibility that she personally feels when she steps forward during those moments of political jeopardy.
“Excited is not the emotion,” she says. “I find it extremely nerve-wracking. I feel a lot of pressure.” That pressure, she points out, does not come from her editors or senior figures at Sky News. “It’s pressure I put on myself,” she explains. “Because you’re in front of that person on behalf of everyone else who isn’t. And you’ve got to do it well.”
Rigby may now be one of the most instantly recognisable political journalists in the country but she tells us that she is also someone who has spent much of her adulthood feeling she has to justify her position and achievements.
“I definitely had a feeling of always having to prove that I deserved to be there,” she says of her time studying at Cambridge. “That I’d earned that spot. And that’s sort of driven me my whole life.”
Rigby tells us that she did not grow up immersed in politics, only starting to pay close attention when she studied it. Before that, her sense of public life came from elsewhere, – watching her headteacher mother at work and slowly realising the impact she had on the people around her.
“I used to think, God, it’s really annoying my mum’s never around,” she recalls. “Then I’d turn up at her school and see how much all the kids and teachers loved her. And I realised she was doing something that mattered.”
The idea that public-facing roles carry responsibility runs through everything Rigby says about her own work during our sit-down conversation. It is central to how she approaches interviewing those in power, especially at moments of political tension, when the stakes are high and the scrutiny intense.
“There are times when you are catching a politician at a moment of real jeopardy,” she says. “Sometimes it’s the framing of the question rather than the answer that captures the moment. Because you can’t control how a politician will answer.”
The language and tone that Rigby adopts when framing those questions often echo the way that people speak in workplaces, cafes, and at school gates. Rigby repeatedly talks about representing the audience, and watching her on screen, you get a real sense of that mission. Despite now unarguably being a political insider, Rigby’s abiding sense of having to “prove she deserves to be there” seems to have furnished her with an outsider’s eye that can instinctively spot what matters to viewers the most.
“I work in Westminster, but I’m not of Westminster,” she says, explaining that being surrounded by a network that does not live and breathe politics, helps keep her grounded. “The stuff that might float the boat of the Westminster village is not always relevant to the public.”
Rigby cares deeply about maintaining relevance, and it is something that she wants to see protected. The challenge for her profession now, she tells us, is more severe than at any point in her career with the spread of disinformation and a wider undermining of trust in journalism.
“When you say how might it look in 10 years, I am hugely worried about it,” she says. “So, I'm not going to sit here and go, ‘Oh, actually, I think it's all going to be fine’. I don't know if it is. But I think all we can try to do is keep doing our jobs really well. Trying to hold power to account, continuing to be courageous, and not pulling your punches because you're worried about access.”
Part of the response, she believes, also has to be adaptation. Audiences are fragmenting, habits are changing, and journalism has to move with them. Rigby has embraced social media, recently joining TikTok, and co-hosts the popular Electoral Dysfunction podcast with Harriet Harman and Ruth Davidson.
“There’s no point insisting everything happens on the ten o’clock news if that’s not where people are,” she says. “The days in which a grey beard or a clever person stood in an ivory tower, opining to the masses, are gone. We have to meet audiences where they are.”
Rigby is largely positive about the ability of social media to forge direct connections with audiences, but as with many other high-profile women, visibility and accessibility also carry a cost. Rigby is frank about the challenges that come with being a prominent woman in public life.
“There is endless abuse,” she says. “Pure misogyny, for no reason.” Early in her broadcasting career, she sometimes found it overwhelming. A tough question once asked of Boris Johnson led to a pile-on about her voice, her appearance, her right to be there at all. “I found that really upsetting,” she candidly admits. “I was much younger. I was relatively new. And it was a lot.”
She says the abuse bothers her less now, but she does worry about its effect on others. “I can understand why younger women would look at that and think, ‘no thank you’,” she says. “And women from ethnic minorities get far worse than I ever have.”
However, there has also been progress. When Rigby started out, she remembers that there was only one female political editor. Now there are many more. Parliament, too, looks different with women making up 40 per cent of MPs in the Commons. “That changes conversations,” she says. “Representation really matters.” But Rigby is wary of complacency. “You think you’ve won the argument. But then you realise you have to keep making it.”
