Laura Kuenssberg 'was invited to a threesome by Government minister who lay sprawled on hotel bed with shirt buttons undone and his partner there waiting'

As a hard-nosed veteran news presenter, she’s had more than her fair share of awkward run-ins with high-profile political figures.

But now BBC presenter Laura Kuenssberg has claimed that a minister and his partner once appeared to be inviting her to have a threesome.

Another senior figure was said to have groped her at the theatre.

Ms Kuenssberg, 50, whose new book Pay Attention is published this week, revealed a ‘very uncomfortable’ encounter with the unnamed first politician at a party conference.

In the memoir, she recounts how she had met the minister in his hotel room, expecting him to be with his adviser.

But instead, the former BBC political editor was confronted by the sight of the politician with too many shirt buttons undone and his partner alongside.

As the minister sprawled himself across the hotel bed, she quickly finished her drink and left.

Challenged on Saturday to say whether the minister was offering her a menage a trois, Ms Kuenssberg told an interviewer: ‘Well, maybe they were and maybe they weren’t. 

'As I say, maybe they weren’t and I got it completely wrong. It was very uncomfortable.’

Laura Kuenssberg, 50, was the BBC's political editor and now fronts Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg

In her new book Pay Attention, Ms Kuenssberg narrates a range of uncomfortable encounters in her career, as well as examining how politics has become so polarised

She has not revealed the identity of the minister, nor which party conference she was referring to. 

And on Saturday night, Ms Kuenssberg made clear that she would never name the politician in question.

She told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Nice try [but] I am taking it to my grave.’

She also cautioned against assuming that as she was BBC political editor from 2015 to 2022, it would inevitably have been a Tory politician – pointing out that she had attended party conferences in different jobs before and after she was political editor. 

The journalist, now presenter of BBC1’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, also tells how another government minister – who she would have coffee with to discuss the politics of the day and who was married – invited her to the theatre and once had ‘a little grope’. The presenter immediately cut off all contact with him.

Another former minister, she writes, greeted her every time he saw her with a kiss on the head, something she calls ‘weird’. 

And a peer, whose gender she did not share, once sent her a ‘really creepy text’ complimenting her clothes worn on TV. 

Again, Ms Kuenssberg stopped replying. 

Speaking to The Times on Saturday, she said: ‘People do things. And human behaviour is a complicated thing and sometimes people behave badly. '

She added: ‘There is still a concern in Westminster that particularly young people starting out are sometimes very vulnerable.’

The journalist also details the vile abuse she has endured during her career, particularly as the main face of the BBC’s political coverage before, during and after the Brexit vote. 

After receiving an online message reading ‘Why don’t you f*** off and die of ovarian cancer, you b****,’ she stopped looking at her social media feeds.

At times, concern from BBC bosses was so great that they hired bodyguards to accompany her, and she describes how she was even forced to flee a Jeremy Corbyn campaign event after being confronted by ‘irate’ men.

However, the majority of the book focuses on politics itself: from her experiences interviewing prime ministers including Boris Johnson and Sir Keir Starmer, to how politics has become so fragmented and polarised.

She also devotes two chapters to Nigel Farage, and said on Saturday that the Reform UK leader was ‘incredibly gifted’. 

But in the book, Ms Kuennsberg questions Mr Farage’s approach – which put him ‘into a different category from the vast majority of politicians’.