A helpful question

BBC One's London local news this afternoon reported on Sadiq Khan's attendance at a memorial ceremony for the Bataclan massacre in Paris today and BBC reporter Karl Mercer interviewed the Mayor. 

How's this for 'message placement' courtesy of the BBC?:

Sadiq Khan: I'm here to pay my respects but also to show solidarity. London and Paris have many links. Last year we suffered four terrorist attacks and 14 people lost their lives. It's really important we show solidarity to our French friends.
Karl Mercer: And there's been much cooperation over those three years, particularly in the field of counter-terror, something you're worried will change come March?
Sadiq Khan: One of the things that many Londoners may not realise is that because we're members of the EU our police and security service have a huge amount of cooperation with our colleagues - European Arrest Warrant, being members of Europol, being able the EU passenger name records. On a daily basis our police and security services check DNA records, fingerprints, wanted lists. The UK Borders Agency checks  the watchlists of most of those coming into our country. If there's somebody who leaves London and they've committed a crime we can get them extradited really quickly. And my worry is if it appears to be the case that we leave the EU with no deal, as seems very likely, what will happen on March 30th? There'll be no deal whatsoever. What I'm saying to our government is that bearing in mind there's a possibility now, a real possibility of no deal, work now on a separate security arrangement so on March 30th our police and security services can still work with the EU.

And that was that.

*******

Update: The evening London news bulletin on BBC One tonight returned to this, with the BBC presenter saying:

Three years to the day after the Bataclan terror attack in Paris which killed many dozens of people - the Mayor of London has been to the ceremony to remember those who died. He was joined by survivors and relatives of Londoners who were killed - and he used the occasion to raise concerns over how security in London might be affected after Brexit.

It featured another short interview with Major Khan, where he said much the same as above. Was he again prompted by Karl Mercer of the BBC?

Whether he was or not, two French politicians featured in his report backing up Sadiq's views and no contrary views were aired. 

Then things got 'very BBC'...

A BBC-on-BBC interview immediately afterwards, between the presenter and a second BBC reporter, London News 'Brexit reporter' Mark Ashdown, began by basically reinforcing Sadiq Khan's points, rather breathlessly. 

Watching it, I thought 'Gawd, this is biased', and then, after thinking that, came the coup de grâce from Mark Ashdown. It almost took my breath away. He actually said:

And the Mayor's right. If all this falls apart, we have no deal, we risk losing all that. Life could become more difficult.

 "And the Mayor's right"??? Really, BBC???

(Is Mark any relation to Paddy?)