Nigel Farage has criticised the “out-of-touch” BBC, calling for a televised debate on the future of the funding of the broadcaster, which is maintained with a mandatory charge on all those watching live television.

Writing in The Telegraph on Tuesday, the Brexit leader mocked remarks from Samira Ahmed that appeared to suggest the BBC presenter was “haunted” by accusations that the broadcaster had elevated the status of himself and his former party UKIP in the political arena.

Anticipating further accusations of liberal bias, the BBC said last week that the presenter claimed “she was referring to being ‘haunted’ by the number of complaints rather than trying to give a wider commentary”.

Mr Farage did not believe the BBC’s explanation, instead taking Ms Ahmed’s comments to reflect her fear that the BBC had given a platform to a right-wing, Eurosceptic party which last decade was rising in the polls.

“I have argued for many years that the BBC is stuffed full of out-of-touch Oxbridge graduates like Ahmed who appear to regard anybody with a political opinion that conflicts with theirs as being beneath contempt. Her comments are just another depressing illustration of how far removed the corporation is from everyday licence payers,” Mr Farage wrote.

However, the Brexit leader remarked that the issues “illustrate why the TV licence fee must be abolished forthwith”, calling for a “televised debate… on the future of the BBC. Perhaps Samira Ahmed should host it. I will gladly take part — or would that haunt her?”

He also criticised Boris Johnson for appearing to back away from his election campaign remarks on addressing the future of the licence fee, which the prime minister had branded in December 2019 “effectively a general tax on everybody who has a TV”, adding: “How long can you justify a system whereby everybody who has a TV has to pay to fund a particular set of channels?”

The Whitehall review on decriminalising non-payment was also shelved in the New Year, which Farage called a “big mistake” and showing a “cowardice which has become his hallmark”.

Farage continued that “it seems he has chosen to duck the BBC issue altogether, and so the BBC gravy train roars on, now driven by its commercially-minded boss, Tim Davie.

“This leaves Samira Ahmed and other BBC figures free to cast aspersions on democracy while being paid enough public money in salaries to make most working people weep. It is a deplorable situation.”

In February, it was reported that Prime Minister Johnson had gone soft on the liberal broadcaster, backing the option of “reforming” the BBC, putting him at odds with his then-advisor Dominic Cummings who was in favour of scrapping the fee and turning it into a subscription service, in line with popular models like Amazon Prime and Netflix.

Broadcasting watchdog Ofcom warned in late 2019 that the licence fee was an unsuitable means of funding the broadcaster, as young people are “tuning out” of the BBC. A year later, reports claimed that licence fee subscriptions had collapsed by more than 250,000 in 12 months.

In the past year, the BBC has embraced the Marxist Black Lives Matter cause, giving rise to the growth of the Defund The BBC movement. A poll from last month found that a third of viewers thought the broadcaster was too woke, with more than half saying it was not good value for money.

The broadcaster recently came under fire from The Bow Group, the UK’s oldest conservative think tank, for opening up a dedicated webpage for viewers to lodge their complaints about there being too much coverage of the death of Prince Philip.

The group’s chairman, Ben Harris-Quinney, called it “utterly bizarre”, asking where were the similar pages to complain about the “thousands of hours” of coverage devoted to BLM.