Matthew d'Ancona: The BBC is still a great British success story that deserves respect

The Tories should forget about trying to tame 'Auntie' - the public has no appetite for a petty political vendetta

Up in lights: Broadcasting House as the results of the exit polls are announced at 10pm last Thursday night

13 May 2015

When Sajid Javid was Culture Secretary, the BBC’s management lived in perpetual fear of merciless upheaval. According to one well-placed source: “He used to look round with banker’s eyes as if everything at the Beeb could be valued and privatised.”

Now senior staff are looking back at the short Javid era as the good old days. Ostensibly at least, John Whittingdale’s appointment as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport is dreadful news for the BBC and a declaration of hostilities by the new, fully-Tory Government. “Whitto”, it is true, has described the licence fee as “worse than a poll tax” and “unsustainable” in the long term.

As former political secretary to Margaret Thatcher, he also has roots in the era when the feud between party and corporation began in earnest. As is well charted in Jean Seaton’s new book Pinkoes and Traitors: the BBC and the Nation, 1974-1987, it was the Beeb’s coverage of Northern Ireland and the Falklands War that made the Tories incandescent and even prompted Mrs Thatcher’s ministers to examine government emergency powers to seize control of the broadcaster. The tension was heightened by Norman Tebbit’s protest in 1986 at Kate Adie’s reporting of the US bombing of Libya.

So No 10’s present fury at the alleged partiality of the BBC’s coverage of the general election is merely the latest skirmish in a longstanding cultural war. The royal charter for the corporation expires at the end of 2016, and the licence fee (£145.50 a year) must be renewed before March 2017. Frustrated for five years by the constraints of coalition with the Lib-Dems, Tory backbenchers — especially those on the Right — regard Whittingdale’s appointment both as symbolic of their liberation and, in practical terms, as a chance, once and for all, to slay the supposedly liberal dragon lurking in Broadcasting House.

To do so would, in my view, be an unforgivable act of cultural vandalism. Full disclosure: I acted as a consultant to Tony Hall at the Royal Opera House before he was appointed director-general of the BBC. But that is not why I object to the relish with which the Tory parliamentary party has welcomed the chance to make Auntie say “uncle”.

For a start, a full-scale assault on the BBC would wholly misinterpret last week’s electoral mandate: a remarkable achievement and an endorsement of David Cameron’s broad trajectory but hardly a blank cheque from the voters to indulge every ideological whim and yearning of the Right.

Second, and connected to that, there is absolutely no public appetite for such an overhaul. Naturally, the BBC has its problems, not least connected to governance (brought horribly to light by the Jimmy Savile scandal). All the same, more than 95 per cent of UK adults use its services every week, while 50 per cent visit BBC Online. On average, the public rates the BBC at seven out of 10. It is by far the most trusted broadcast news source, chosen by 52 per cent of viewers, far ahead of the second-placed ITN on 13 per cent. Its global reach is spectacular.

Even the supposedly-contentious licence fee is more popular now than it was in the Eighties or Nineties, and is favoured by 48 per cent of the public, well ahead of advertising (29 per cent) and subscription (20 per cent). This is perhaps less surprising than it seems: we have grown used to coughing up for satellite TV, Apple TV, Netflix and other services. A normal satellite package will cost at least £25 a month. The BBC charge may be coercive and non-payment still a criminal offence. But — at just over £12 a month — it has also been shown by its competitors to be very good value. Its hypothecation also chimes with the growing taste for transparency in taxation.

Most strikingly, support for both the BBC and the licence fee is strongest amongst Conservative supporters, significantly higher than the UK average. If this wholly-Tory government takes on the BBC, it will also be taking on its wholly-Tory voters. This seems a peculiar strategy for a party with a 12-seat majority already looking forward to the 2020 election.

The question is why the BBC, like Brussels, so infuriates Conservative MPs. Although they complain relentlessly about “bias”, I doubt this is the heart of the matter. As one Tory Privy Councillor put it to me: “There may be good reasons to take on the BBC. But not on the issue of impartiality.” Anyone who has made a political programme for the Beeb can attest that the pursuit of impartiality is remorseless to the point of neuralgia. The idea that the corporation’s programme makers are churning out anti-Conservative propaganda at public expense is risible.

I think the BBC bugs, bothers and bewilders the Tory psyche for other reasons. It is one of the great institutional creations of the last century, rivalled only by the NHS. Yet, like the health service, it is a collectivist organisation funded by public money. It has adapted well to technological and social change, and is a model of public-private cooperation in its internal procedures, with more competition to come. Tories are used to fixing the crumbling edifices of the 20th century — welfare, the education system, local government — but not to a behemoth in their midst that has pre-empted change (John Birt’s great legacy) and evolved successfully. The BBC does not fit snugly into the conventions and assumptions of Toryland. It ought to be declining. Instead, it needs more investment and reform.

It should certainly not be the target of a petty political vendetta, to get a cheap roar at 1922 committee meetings. Whittingdale, who is a highly intelligent and sophisticated politician, now has the chance to escape his caricature as a joyless Right-wing ideologue. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister, who said so often on the campaign trail that government is all about priorities, should not waste time and energy on ruining an indisputable British success story.

Matthew d'Ancona: The BBC is still a great British success story that deserves respect

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