Timothy Colin Harvey Luckhurst (born 8 January 1963) is a British journalist and academic, currently principal of South College of Durham University and an associate pro-vice-chancellor.
[1][5] Between 1985 and 1988 he worked as parliamentary press officer for Donald Dewar (then Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland) and for the Scottish Labour group of MPs at Westminster.
[18] In 2017, he contributed a chapter entitled Online and On Death Row: Historicising Newspapers in Crisis to the Routledge Companion to British Media History.
In Responsibility without Power: Lord Justice Leveson's Constitutional Dilemma he argued that 'An officially regulated press is the glib, easy, dangerous solution.
It would spell the slow, painful death of a raucous, audacious and impertinent press able to speak truth to power on behalf of its readers and entertaining enough to secure their loyalty'.
[39] Luckhurst described it as a "poisonously anti-British corruption of the history of the war of Irish independence" and compared director Ken Loach to Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl.
His role was to discuss Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis' criticism regarding fallout from Dominic Cummings' controversial trip to Barnard Castle during a COVID-19 lockdown.
Liddle's speech included remarks that "a person with an X and a Y chromosome, that has a long, dangling penis, is scientifically a man" and "colonialism is not remotely the major cause of Africa's problems, just as [...] the educational underachievement of British people of Caribbean descent or African Americans is nothing to do with institutional or structural racism", prompting accusations of transphobia and racism.
[46] The Times newspaper, which Liddle worked for as a weekly columnist, published a controversial opinion piece in support of Luckhurst, lamenting the University's decision to launch an investigation.
[47] The university investigation concluded in January 2022[48] and Luckhurst resumed all his duties as principal of the college and associate pro-vice-chancellor,[49] but for confidentiality reasons the report was unpublished.
[50] The Times controversially claimed the shift to calling for Luckhurst’s resignation was understood to have taken place after his wife, Dorothy, branded students "a bunch of inadequates".
Noting numerous accusations that Luckhurst had established and edited his own Wikipedia page favourably on a longstanding basis under the username Gutterbluid.
[51] In July 2022, Luckhurst agreed with former BBC Scotland lawyer Alistair Bonnington's claim that the corporation was "slavishly biased in favour of the Scottish National Party (SNP) who now form the devolved Holyrood government.
He also claimed that "many of the BBC's young journalists appear to have nationalist sympathies", and called Bonnington "astute and brave [for identifying] a flaw that others have detected but chosen not to name".