Charles Moore on BBC’S Brexit bias

It might be time to join the guerrilla war against paying the licence fee

When I appeared on BBC Question Time last week and asked the chairman, Fiona Bruce, why it was that Leave supporters are, on average, heavily outnumbered on the programme’s panel, she denied the charge, even though I was the only Leaver out of five.

Early calculations from the Institute of Economic Affairs back me up, however, showing that, over 2018 and this year, the balance of the panel has been 36 per cent Leave to 60 per cent Remain.

The imbalance may be even more extreme than that: the BBC counts “Releavers” – Remainers who now say they want to Leave – as Leavers. By that definition, Philip Hammond would show up as a Leaver, yet he has undermined Brexit throughout. Yesterday he was reported saying that the Government had “no red lines” left.

Since the BBC refuses to admit any problem about any of its Brexit coverage, what can licence-fee payers do? After the horrible BBC radio show in 2008 when Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand left obscene messages on the answering machine of the actor Andrew Sachs, alleging that Brand had slept with his granddaughter, I refused to pay my licence fee until the two

were removed from the organisation. Brand was dropped quickly, but Ross (who was on £6 million a year) took more prising out.

In the intervening period, I was charged with failing to pay my licence fee. This is what is known as a “statutory offence”, by which no motive has to be shown, and none can be used as an excuse. If you have not paid, you are automatically fined. Since I naturally admitted that I had not paid, my reason of conscience was of no interest to the magistrate.

I represented myself, but was forced to pay the BBC’S costs of (I think) £550. I was fined £250. I then bought a TV licence, because by this time Ross had left to behave disgustingly elsewhere. If I had again refused to buy one, while keeping my television, my funds could have been distrained and I might, eventually, have gone to prison.

So what is the best way to refuse to pay? Obviously there is some safety in numbers. In the past 10 years, the British population has risen by almost five million, but the number of licence fees paid by less than one million. One never meets a person under 40 who pays a licence fee. Therefore the BBC is increasingly desperate for the money. A strike by a million fee-payers would deprive it of 4 per cent of its income, a severe knock.

I do not know how this is best organised – though I do know that a great many Leave supporters are already conducting guerrilla war against the corporation on this. One method might be to link non-payment to a lawsuit. In relation to the Brexit coverage I have seen, the BBC appears to be in breach of its charter in at least three respects – Diversity (article 14.1); the duty to “assess” all citizens’ views (article 10.1); and Impartiality (article 6.1). How about bringing an action against it, refusing to pay one’s licence fee until the case is settled? Or how about paying most of one’s licence, but cutting off, say, 10 per cent (£15.45), so that the BBC gets snarled up having to decide whether to chase hundreds of thousands of people for individually minor sums?

Many lovers of spy stories will know the work of Alan Judd and his hero Charles Thoroughgood, who has risen to become the head of MI6. Judd is reported to have been in the service: he certainly knows of what he speaks.

His latest novel, Accidental Agent (Simon and Schuster, just out), is beautifully timed. Without revealing too much of the plot, I can say that Brexit negotiations over money are in progress. MI6 finds itself getting what seems to be outstandingly good intelligence about the EU’S bottom line. Thoroughgood, however – whose quiet toughness echoes the real-life character of Sir Richard Dearlove, the former “C” who has bravely supported Brexit – gets suspicious. The intelligence is too good to be true, and Thoroughgood’s eye falls on the case officer, an ambitious Remainer with a chip on his shoulder.

With the help of the Foreign Secretary, an unnamed man with an unusual turn of phrase and his shirt always hanging out, Britain hits back by misinforming the traitor and thus reversing the flow of false information. Sadly, this is, as I say, fiction. The facts of the Brexit negotiations are more lurid, and much more depressing.

The no-deal option is supposed to be a “cliff edge”. In Shakespeare’s King Lear, poor Gloucester has been blinded by his enemies. Despairing, and remorseful for having disinherited his son Edgar because of false rumours, he seeks Dover cliff so that he can jump off it and end his life.

Being blind, he cannot know where it is. Edgar, full of love for his father, catches up with him, in disguise, and pretends to take him to the cliff edge. He describes to blind Gloucester what he pretends to see – “How fearful/ And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low” – and lets him jump. Gloucester throws himself forward… and nothing happens. Gloucester thinks he is dead, but Edgar says, “Give me your arm:/ Up: so; how is’t? Feel you your legs? You stand.” Father and son are reunited.

If only we were allowed to jump off the cliff edge this Friday, we would stand, too. Unfortunately, we have no Edgar to lead us.