For the first time, there are signs that a Tory government is freeing itself of its Stockholm Syndrome attitude towards the BBC. There have been suggestions it will de-criminalise non-payment of the BBC license fee this autumn, and there are signals that Number 10 is finally seeing the Corporation as what it has become: an enemy of conservatism and a champion of a vapid potpourri of fashionable nonsense.
It’s beginning to look like out there in viewer-land, support for the licence fee is ebbing fast
In response, it is clear the Corporation is mounting its own defence and once again calling on its friends in high places to take up arms and man the defences on its behalf. The liberal establishment is on high alert because it sees the barbarians at the gate and it fears, this time, the walls may be breached.
A slim volume of essays published this month, called The BBC: A Winter of Discontent?, characterises the kind of attacks what I call the ‘friends of the BBC’ will make in the coming months.
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