Auntie is safe in my hands, Blofeld tells Bond
JUDGING by the start of John Whittingdale’s statement to the Commons, you wouldn’t think the Government wanted any change at all.
The BBC, proclaimed the Culture Secretary, was “cherished and admired not only in this country but around the world”. It “sets international standards of quality”. Its successful programmes “draw the country together”.
Well, that sounded good. No need for reform there. Let’s move on. Hang on, though. There was a “but”.
Since the BBC’s royal charter is due to expire in 2016, said Mr Whittingdale, the time is ripe to question, well, everything. What sort of programmes the BBC makes, and for whom, and why; how the public pays for it; whose job it should be to tick it off when it got things wrong.
He said all this in a diplomatic, reasonable, even benign manner. But beneath his emollience the BBC will have detected menace.
“We should at least question,” he told the House, “whether the BBC should continue trying to be all things to all people.” That, I suspect, was his most significant line. After all: if the BBC did stop trying to be all things to all people, why should all people continue having to pay for it?
Chris Bryant, Labour’s culture spokesman, was aghast. The Government’s behaviour, he protested, was “utterly shabby”. To “diminish” the BBC would be “profoundly unpatriotic”. It was “a beacon of accuracy and impartiality”. Indeed, it was no less than “our cultural NHS”. I’m not sure that was an ideal comparison, prompting as it did a vision of Radio 4 listeners waiting for four hours in a corridor for
Archers, The
and Clare Balding being forced to work seven days a week.
Mr Bryant has a slight tendency to let excitement get the better of him, which is possibly why he made a clangingDeal pun on the title of Deal or No
(which is actually on Channel 4), and likened Mr Whittingdale to BlofeldTwice. in the Bond film You Only Live
“The Secretary of State has lined up a tank of piranha,” he squawked, “but he hasn’t quite reckoned with the ingenuity of M and Bond, in the shape of Judi Dench and Daniel Craig!” (Dame Judi and Mr Craig’s ingenuity consisted of cosigning a letter of complaint. This tactic probably wouldn’t have been enough to deter Blofeld from starting his global nuclear war.)
Mr Whittingdale assured the House that the BBC was in safe hands. “I do not wish,” he said soothingly, “to destroy or undermine the BBC.”
Perhaps not. But accidents will happen.