BBC must have confidence in itself if it's to survive coming battle with government

By Ian Dunt

One of the ironies of the BBC is that it conducts its battles with government so nervously, given their comparative levels of public trust. As poll after poll shows, people don't trust the government, but they do trust, and like, the BBC. And yet two stories from this weekend – Cameron's might-have-been-a-joke comment that he'd close the BBC down and director general Tony Hall's acceptance that the licence fee would only last another ten years – showed how disconnected the BBC's confidence is from its performance.

Nick Robinson's odd revelation yesterday that the prime minister had said he would "close them down after the election" could have been a joke. But, as he wrote afterwards, "it doesn't really matter… the people who did [work for the BBC] regarded it as yet another bit of pressure and a sort of sense of 'don't forget who's boss here'".

A sense took hold among senior Tories during the election that the BBC was fighting for a Labour victory. It was an absurd charge which did more to reveal the desperate sense of misplaced victimhood within sections of the right than it did any conspiracy in the BBC's coverage. During the campaign, then-culture secretary Sajid Javid said one Today programme item was "very, very anti-Tory" and you got a sense that there would be a Tory assault after the vote, if they managed to stay in power.

Tory MPs and right-wing commentators have a daily ritual pointing out how biased and left-wing the Today programme is each morning. It is an extraordinary thing to behold, a Rorschach test for bleating self-entitlement. The programme is anchored by a predominantly faintly conservative crowd. The right's complaint about its coverage seems to be that it occasionally features people who do not think exactly like them.

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