Daily Politics is a British television show launched by the BBC in 2003 and presented by Andrew Neil and Jo Coburn. The programme takes an in-depth and sometimes irreverent look at the daily goings on in Westminster and other areas across Britain and the world, and includes interviews with leading politicians and political commentators.

In 2000, the then BBC Director General Greg Dyke ordered a review of political output from BBC, which was carried out by Fran Unsworth, and led to a major overhaul of political output in 2003. A number of flagship programmes were axed including On the Record, Despatch Box and Westminster Live and replaced with a new raft of programmes, including the Daily Politics and The Politics Show.

In October 2011 it was announced that from 9 January 2012 the Daily Politics would be relaunched broadcasting six days a week (Daily Politics - Monday to Friday and the Sunday Politics at the weekends). The duration of the Daily Politics was extended from 30 to 60 minutes on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, remaining at 90 minutes on Wednesdays. The Sunday Politics would become a weekend edition of the Daily Politics presented by Andrew Neil and replacing The Politics Show, which ended in December 2011.

Nigel Paul Farage ( /ˈfærɑːʒ/, FARR-ahzh; born 3 April 1964, Farnborough, Kent), is a British politician and is the Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a position he also held from September 2006 to November 2009. He is a Member of the European Parliament for South East England and co-chairs the Eurosceptic Europe of Freedom and Democracy group.

Farage is a founding member of the UKIP, having left the Conservative Party in 1992 after they signed the Maastricht Treaty. Having unsuccessfully campaigned in European and Westminster parliamentary elections for UKIP since 1994, he gained a seat as an MEP for South East England in the 1999 European Parliament Election — the first year the regional list system was used — and was re-elected in 2004 and 2009. Farage describes himself as a libertarian and rejects the notion that he is a conservative.

In September 2006, Farage became the UKIP Leader and led the party through the 2009 European Parliament Election in which it received the second highest share of the popular vote, defeating Labour and the Liberal Democrats with over two million votes. However he stepped down in November 2009 to concentrate on contesting the Speaker John Bercow's seat of Buckingham in the 2010 general election.

Andrew Ferguson Neil (born 21 May 1949) is a Scottish journalist and broadcaster.

He currently works for the BBC, presenting the live political programmes The Daily Politics on BBC Two, The Sunday Politics on BBC One and This Week on BBC One. For the BBC he also anchors Straight Talk with Andrew Neil and makes documentaries.

He is also Chairman of Spectator Magazines; Chairman of ITP Magazines (Dubai); and Chairman of World Media Rights (London).

Neil made his name at The Sunday Times where he was editor for 11 years. In 1995 he was made editor-in-chief of the Press Holdings group of newspapers, owner of The Business and (from 2005) The Spectator, moving up to become chairman in July 2008.

Neil was born in Paisley, Renfrewshire. He grew up in the Glenburn area, and attended the local Lancraigs Primary School. Aged 11, Neil passed his 11-plus examinations and sent to the then academically selective Paisley Grammar School. His father was a professional soldier who had worked his way up through the ranks; his mother worked in the local cotton mills.^{[citation needed]}

George Galloway (born 16 August 1954) is a British politician, author, journalist, and broadcaster, and the Respect Member of Parliament (MP) for Bradford West. He was previously an MP for the Labour Party, for Glasgow Hillhead and then its successor constituency Glasgow Kelvin from 1987 until 2005. He was expelled from the Labour Party in October 2003 because of his strident public opposition to the Iraq War. He subsequently became a founding member of the left-wing Respect Party, and was elected as the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in 2005. In 2010, Galloway unsuccessfully contested the seat of Poplar and Limehouse, and in 2011 he unsuccessfully contested the Glasgow list for the Scottish Parliament, before being elected as an MP in the Bradford West by-election, 2012.

Galloway is well known for his campaigns in support of the Palestinians in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In the late-1980s Hansard records him delivering a ferocious assault on the Ba'ath regime, and Galloway opposed Saddam's regime until the United States-led Gulf War in 1991. Galloway is known for a visit to Iraq where he met Saddam Hussein, and delivered a speech, which ended in English with the statement "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability." He has always stated that he was addressing the Iraqi people in the speech. Galloway testified to the United States Senate in 2005 over alleged illicit payments from the United Nations' Oil for Food Programme.

Jo Coburn (born November 1968) is a British journalist and political correspondent for BBC News, previously with special responsibility for BBC Breakfast. She has also previously worked as BBC political correspondent for London, most notably during the 2000 London Mayoral election. She is currently an occasional relief presenter on the BBC News Channel and a regular presenter of The Daily Politics alongside Andrew Neil. She has presented on BBC Radio Four in the past. and can sometimes be heard on the weekend current affairs programme The World This Weekend. Jo started her career by accident, in community radio. She has worked for a number of local radio stations in the Thames Valley, including Mix 96 Aylesbury, Fox FM Oxford, and Star FM in Slough.

She is a fluent speaker of German.

After working as a regional correspondent for BBC London for four years, Coburn joined BBC Breakfast in 2001 as a political correspondent. She had first come to prominence when she covered events surrounding the 2000 London Mayoral election, and she went on to cover the 2001 general election. During her time at BBC Breakfast she covered events surrounding the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq war, and returned from maternity leave in 2005 to report on that year's general election. She spent some time presenting on the BBC News Channel and three months as presenter of Radio Four's political events programme The World This Weekend. She also covered the 2007 French presidential election and the European Constitution. In 2008, she was part of press pack during British prime minister Gordon Brown's visits to both Afghanistan and to Beijing for the closing days of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.