Dominic Cummings, the Prime minister’s demonic familiar, has proudly proclaimed his wish to see the BBC gone, to be replaced by a docile, biddable, rightwing mouthpiece for the Tories.

There is a two-pronged attack. The BBC’s income is to be undermined by effectively making the licence fee optional. Its administration has already been handed to a Tory, the new Director General, Tim Davie.

Many on the Left consider the Beeb to have a rightwing bias.  How could it be otherwise when the power in the land  ─ political, financial and industrial  ─ lies with the Tories and the principal broadcasters come from the public school- Oxbridge upper class. During the 2019 General Election campaign,  government ministers were forbidden to appear on the Radio 4 Today programme because of its alleged leftwing bias. This was baloney. The programme’s chief presenter, Nick Robinson (a Tory faithful, rising through the ranks of the Conservatives before joining the BBC) and its various correspondents gleefully pounced on any criticism of |Jeremy Corbyn, especially the stream of lies emanating from Margaret Hodge MP.

Nevertheless, I would defend the BBC’s news coverage against those who want it to become a dumbed-down version of Fox News, perhaps replete, US-style,  with jingles and other entertainments devised to lighten the burden of such heavy listening as factual reportage, the assumption being that President Trump’s limited attention span is typical of the human race.

For all its faults, on balance, The BBC is the best broadcaster in the world.

Radio 4 addicts cannot get by without their daily fix of such exemplary programmes as In Our Time, Woman’s Hour, From our Own Correspondent, Afternoon Drama and The Archers. What gets up the nose of the government is the range of social, financial and political problems subjected to analysis by the BBC. Invariably, there is “no government minister available”  to respond to a programme’s findings.

BBC TV has yielded Strictly, Top Gear, Luther, the Scandi-noir series, The Great British Bake-off, Have I Got News For You, Absolutely Fabulous and Gavin & Stacey.  All these shows are forgotten by many people when they are asked whether the BBC radio and TV services are worth the licence fee.   And yet each household can have as many radios and TV sets as they like for just 43p per day. Remember that the average cup of coffee will set you back at least £2.

The government has been undermining the BBC’s finances for years.  The Foreign Office used to cover the cost of the World Service, but withdrew the money while insisting that the service should continue. The free licence for the elderly was once covered by the government as a social service.  No longer. The BBC now has to consume the cost.  Its net  income has been cut by around 30 per cent and yet there has been little discernible decline in the quality of its services.

The Tories have now got the bit between their teeth and will not be content until this, the greatest and best public service broadcaster in the world, has been dismembered.

 

The people of Britain are in danger of being duped by the government’s lies about the BBC and its lethal strategy aimed at doing away with it.  The vultures are standing by: Rupert Murdoch and the American networks. Do we really want our airwaves polluted by far right shock-jocks and evangelistic bigots?

The danger is that the people of this country will not know what riches they have until they are gone.

I have written to my MP expressing my concern.  Please do the same.