The BBC’s biggest problem

As I write this, the director-general of the BBC is being quizzed on the corporation’s future by people who were around when Sir John Reith kind of set the whole thing up. A cheap crack, I know – and I have nothing against the House of Lords. Anything which mediates our dangerous experiment with democracy is to be welcomed – the peers, the royals, the judges etc. I have been dipping in and out of the event and have yet to hear Tim Davie asked if he plans to bring back It’s That Man Again or whether or not the injunction ‘sod off’ is suitable for post-watershed viewing. If only they would ask this kind of thing, in a way – the crisis is rather more existential today.

Davie has a lot on his plate, not least the fact that when he took up the job he seemed to accept Auntie dressed to the left and in the intervening 34 months she has swung even further in that direction. More pressing, of course, are his troubles with Huw Edwards, who has been accused of paying a person much younger than himself large sums of money so he might gaze in awe at their resplendent nakedness. In the moronosphere of the internet, the left has decided that even if these allegations are correct, Huw has not broken the law so there is no case to answer.

This is a bizarre stance to hear parroted by people who spend half of their lives demanding that right-wingers should be sacked from any positions they hold because of their unpalatable opinions. I assume they would be every bit as protective of the presenter were he called Piers Morgan or Andrew Neil.