In the wake of BrandRossGate, the Tories have sensed a political opportunity, and – to some extent – they’re making something of it. How so? Well, David Cameron attacks the BBC in a piece for today’s Sun. Whilst the shadow culture minister, Jeremy Hunt, does similar in a post for Centre Right.
By-and-large, the articles touch on the same issues – “decency” and “bloated salaries”, for instance – although it’s striking that Cameron dwells on a topic that the Tories have tended to shy away from in the past: namely, the “political bias” of the Beeb. Here’s the relevant passage:
“But, I can hear the cry, what about the left-wing bias?
My answer is: yes, the BBC does have what even Andrew Marr called an “innate liberal bias”, principally because it does not have to behave like a commercial organisation and make its money from scratch every year.
That tends to make the BBC instinctively pro-Big State, distinctly iffy about the free market and sometimes dismissive of a conservative viewpoint.
I’ll never forget, some years ago, sitting next to a BBC presenter at a function and being told it was just about all right to have Conservative politicians on the radio, but ‘there weren’t really any you would want to see socially’.”
It’s a sure sign of how much the BBC has been undermined by recent scandals, that the Tory leader can so bluntly attack the broadcaster’s politics. The question now is whether the attack will earn him and his ministers easier interviews, or more torrid ones.
Where both articles do hold back, though, is the issue of the licence fee. Sure, Cameron writes that: “When digital switchover is completed, there may be some money left over. One option that should be considered is to return that money to licence fee payers in the form of a cut in its cost.” But the downplaying of yesterday’s claim that a Tory adminstration would knock £6 from the fee – coupled with Cameron’s assertion that “I even approve of the way the BBC is funded” – suggests that that is more a loose aspiration than a definite aim.
If so, recent polls suggest that the Tories are missing an open goal here . But – even worse – they may also be missing the chance to push for a reduced burden on low-income earners. And at a time when the economic downturn is biting deeper and deeper.
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