BBC LEGEND RIPS APART ‘LIAR’ BORIS
‘Arrogant. Untrustworthy. Childish’: David Dimbleby blasts PM amid licence fee row
DaviD Dimbleby has launched a savage attack on ‘lying’ Boris Johnson’s ‘pernicious’ attempt to curb the BBC licence fee. The veteran broadcaster accused the Prime Minister of using the issue to undermine the corporation and avoid having his policies scrutinised.
He said Mr Johnson ‘doesn’t give a damn’ about fairness because his landslide election victory had made him ‘arrogant with power’. His conduct towards the BBC was ‘childish, peevish and unpleasant’, he added.
dimbleby, 82, said the PM was ‘apeing donald Trump’ by using the same ‘political rulebook’ to try to control the media. And he took a fierce sideswipe at Mr Johnson’s
chief adviser Dominic Cummings, seen as the driving force behind Downing St threats to cut the licence fee – or scrap it altogether. ‘Johnson’s never governed anything, Cummings has never governed anything,’ said the former Question Time host. ‘They’re ignorant…floundering. I don’t think they have a strategy.’
His comments were disclosed after Downing Street mooted a radical overhaul that could mean introducing a subscription model, forcing the sale of most BBC radio stations, cutting the number of TV stations and reducing the amount of online content.
Senior BBC figures have been encouraging people to sign a petition demanding the PM stops trying to ‘undermine’ the broadcaster. And some Tory backbenchers have urged Mr Johnson not to ‘pick a fight’ with the corporation, saying it still plays a key role in national life.
In an interview broadcast by Germany’s ARD state TV channel, Dimbleby said: ‘The BBC is under threat in a way it has
‘He lies everywhere to everyone’
never been before. The pernicious route they [the Government] are using is to say the licence fee is wrong or unfair. I don’t believe it is wrong or unfair.
‘It is a way of damaging and undermining the BBC that is dangerous and should be resisted forcefully if public broadcasting is to survive. Anything that chips away at what we believe to be a good democratic process is dangerous and has to be fought against.
‘It has to be explained why not speaking to people is dangerous, why not appearing on television is dangerous.’
However, Dimbleby, who saw Mr Johnson at close quarters during the election campaign while making a BBC documenorganisation tary about him, went much further in remarks made in the long interview with ARD that were not broadcast. A transcript of the full interview shows that he launched a vitriolic personal attack.
According to the transcript he said: ‘ Nobody trusts Boris Johnson. Who could trust Boris Johnson? He lies everywhere to everyone. He lies to his family. He just makes it up, you know.
‘Johnson is apeing some of the attitudes of Trump. He is a different kind of political animal, like Trump, very similar rulebook. If you are like that the one thing you don’t want is people questioning what you’re doing, which is why he won’t let his ministers go on television or any serious programme.’
Mr Johnson ‘ doesn’t give a damn for independent analysis, impartial judgment on what it [the Government] is doing. They’re not willing to submit to scrutiny… because they’re arrogant with power. And they won’t last.
‘ If you’re in the glorious moment of supreme power the one thing you don’t want is to be held to account. You do it your way. Boris Johnson, above all politicians, does it his way. He doesn’t take any notice of what people say. He doesn’t care what people think. He just wants to be bP Prime i Mi Minister.’ it ’ But he claimed the tactic would backfire, and said that moment could occur when Mr Johnson’s Brexit strategy started to go wrong.
‘The moment will come when they need to talk to someone. Things are not going to go easy. The decisions that are stacking up over Brexit, trade negotiations, are going to be very difficult. At some point they will need to explain why they failed to get the 100 per cent they promised.’ In the edited
‘Doesn’t care what people think’
part of the interview that was broadcast, Dimbleby lambasted Mr Johnson’s decision to use his own in-house TV film makers for his Brexit night broadcast instead of the BBC or another mainstream media organisation.
Mocking the kind of soft interview he said Mr Johnson wanted, grinning Dimbleby went on: ‘The idea he can have his own television unit and you come in, chat to him, and say “ooh, Prime Minister, things are going very well,” and he says, “yes, it’s going very well, thank you.” ” Th That t i is t taking ki us b back k 50 years. It’s propaganda.’
In the full transcript, Dimbleby said: ‘The whole idea of a national broadcaster that speaks truth to the nation and is impartial and objective is under threat.’
But he conceded that the Government’s anti-licence fee move was a ‘clever strategy’.
It was a ‘good moment to latch on to’ the growth in Net flix and social media to argue ‘why should people pay £154 a year to watch the BBC when they don’t watch the BBC. What are they paying for?”’
There was a ‘small element of truth in it’, said Dimbleby and there was a case to ‘tweak’ the licence fee. It was reasonable that people on welfare benefits did not pay it, but wealthy older people, such as him, should carry on paying.
There has been a significant revolt from Tory MPs about No 10’s threat to shake up the BBC. Earlier this week, Huw Merriman, who is chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on the BBC, said the ‘ideological trench warfare’ against the corporation was ‘unedifying’.
Downing Street last night declined to comment on the Dimbleby interview.