Editor of far-left website The Canary is booed by Question Time audience as viewers complain about BBC inviting her

THE EDITOR of a far-left conspiracy news website was booed by the Question Time audience last night as she argued for a second EU referendum.

Viewers slammed the BBC for inviting The Canary boss Kerry-Anne Mendoza on its flagship political discussion show.

Her website - which is hugely popular on social media - is accused of peddling "fake news" about the Conservatives and the press.

When the panel on last night's Question Time discussed Brexit, Ms Mendoza called for a fresh vote to overturn last year's result.

She said: "Your main argument about Brexit and why it should go ahead is that we have to have the democratic mandate, it's the will of the people.

"I agree with you, but there is a legitimate case for saying when the Brexit deal comes back, we hold a referendum on how."

Several members of the audience started booing loudly at the comments.

And she also received a hostile reception when she argued that the residents of Grenfell Tower were deliberately neglected by the authorities.

Ms Mendoza said: "The poverty of the people living in that tower block was offensive enough to hide behind combustible cladding and not offensive enough to deal with."

Dozens of viewers - including Labour supporters - complained that The Canary's editor should never have been invited on Question Time in the first place.

The far-left website, which is a vocal cheerleader for Jeremy Corbyn, has repeatedly published false stories.

Last month, it accused The Sun of deliberately ignoring the bomb attack on Manchester Arena for political reasons.

The website was forced to delete its incorrect report when it was pointed out that the attack happened too late in the evening to make the first edition of any newspaper.

The Canary has also been criticised for blaming Jeremy Hunt for a junior doctor's suicide, and inventing a conspiracy which claimed a PR firm was trying to unseat Mr Corbyn.

Left-wing journalist Alex Andreou tweeted last night: "If Kerry-Anne Mendoza is on #bbcqt shouldn't they invite Breitbart for balance? And one of those people who think Elvis is alive."

Viewer Otto English added: "The Canary is a fairly disgraceful fake news website. They really should not be getting this degree of credibility."

George Reeves wrote: "The Canary is the voice of the fake news alt-left. It should not be featuring on #bbcqt alongside representatives from the Economist & LBC."

And author Toby Young compared the website to the Nazis' official newspaper, tweeting: "For balance shouldn't they have the editor of Der Sturmer on as well?"

The other panellists were all respected journalists or mainstream politicians.

Cabinet minister Liam Fox and Labour's Stella Creasy were joined by LBC presenter Nick Ferrari and Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor of The Economist.