Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Rona Fairhead will be good for the BBC – but who was so keen to nobble her rival?

Plus: Another good job for a mother of three, and the battle of Boris Island

Head of the French Socialist party Jean-Christophe Cambadelis Photo: Getty 
issue 06 September 2014

Hats off to Rona Fairhead, the former Financial Times executive who will succeed Lord Patten as chairman of the BBC Trust. It requires a brave spirit to take on this poisonously politicised role — and Fairhead starts with the disadvantage that everyone thinks they know the roll call of candidates who might have been preferred but declined to apply, including her own former boss Dame Marjorie Scardino, for whose job as head of Pearson, the FT’s parent, Fairhead was passed over last year.

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