Privatisation may come too late to save an increasingly irrelevant BBC

Once a national treasure, its popularity has been eroded by technology and its Left-liberal world view

For decades, foreigners have been baffled by just how emotionally attached we are to our health service and national broadcaster, and their outsized roles in our national story. Other countries define themselves by their language, food, culture, history or constitution, but the British have long cited the NHS and the BBC as central to who we are.

This unusual love for two stateowned, technocratic organisations and their egalitarian financing mechanisms goes to the heart of the UK’S complex Left-right, collectivist individualistic identity. Even Margaret Thatcher didn’t dare take them on, fearing the electorate’s wrath.

Yet Britain can change, as the BBC’S panjandrums at Broadcasting House are about to discover. The electorate, regrettably, still considers the NHS, for all its appalling failures, to be one of the gods in Britain’s unofficial polytheistic secular religion, which is why Boris Johnson has promised to spend billions more on it. The BBC, by contrast, has been slowly falling out of favour for the past decade, its popularity eroded by technological, cultural and political forces, just as minor deities were sometimes superseded by others in pre-christian and pre-islamic civilisations.

The internet is the most important reason: not merely the rise of streaming services such as Netflix, but also of social media. The NHS remains unassailable in the public psyche because its monopoly means it treats more people than ever before and its share of GDP keeps on rising. The BBC, by contrast, is losing the relentless battle for time and attention to hyper-dynamic competitors.

Even its huge budget, financed by a poll tax enforced by the threat of prison, is no longer enough to save it. Most people don’t actively dislike the BBC: they just don’t care as much about it and are increasingly unwilling to pay for it. It is clear that the private sector can and will provide every kind of “public service” broadcasting.

Yet the BBC’S problems are greater than apathy. The politically engaged cannot stand it any longer: the hard Left sees the BBC (absurdly) as a procapitalist, pro-tory plot and blames it (spuriously) for Jeremy Corbyn’s implosion.

But it’s the anger of the Brexiteers and of conservatives that will ultimately lead to its disestablishment. They consider it to be hopelessly biased, not just in its news coverage but also in its entertainment programming, which they find infuriatingly woke, anti-business, preachy and engaged in a full-on cultural war against conservative values. Its news division found it impossible to predict Brexit, and then appeared to feel guilty for having “allowed” it to happen. A lack of political, class and geographic diversity means it does not understand the country it is meant to serve.

Someone who only tuned in to the Today programme or Newsnight would have been shocked when Johnson won his 80-seat majority and would be ignorant of the nation’s hierarchy of concerns. The corporation’s defensive attempts at encouraging its senior staff to engage with social media have merely shown up Left-wing bias – and confirmed that the few Tory Brexiteers are in hiding.

The BBC is no longer a national broadcaster: it is at odds (and even at war) with a majority on social issues, is losing younger Left-wing viewers to rival platforms, and its grip on the commanding heights of British culture is steadily loosening, with no way back in a fractured, heterogeneous society. It is no wonder that commercial radio, led by the LBC owner, Global, is on a roll: its finger is on the national pulse.

For all of that, the BBC, or at least its middle management, remains in denial. The game is up, as yesterday’s speech by Nicky Morgan, the Culture Secretary, made clear. For the first time, a Tory government is no longer scared of the corporation: Johnson isn’t content to wait for it to wither but wants to accelerate the process, safe in the knowledge that Tory voters would no longer object.

Prime ministers used to believe that the BBC could make or break their governments; Johnson believes he won twice despite the corporation. No 10 no longer feels that it needs the BBC; it thinks, for example, that it can get away with boycotting Today. As a journalist, I deplore such actions: but the Government is convinced that the power dynamics have shifted in a world where politicians can communicate with people directly.

Quite rightly, non-payment of the licence fee will be decriminalised in two years’ time (rarely has the outcome of a “consultation” been in so little doubt) and the licence fee itself will go by 2027. The Government won’t stop the BBC reimposing the fee on over-75s, a decision which will further reduce support for it.

The onslaught will intensify. Julian Knight, the new pro-brexit chairman of the relevant Commons committee, will hold the corporation to account more aggressively. How, for a start, did the preposterous antibritish, Brexit day episode of Horrible Histories come to be broadcast? There will be intense pressure for the new management at Ofcom to be more rigorous, and questions are already being asked of the Competition and Markets Authority. Why hasn’t it launched a proper investigation into the BBC’S abuse of its (still) dominant position and its dumping of a “free” website?

A radically reformed BBC could still be an asset for Britain: the export market for high-quality entertainment is booming. But time is running out. The new director-general will need to embrace a subscription model – why wait another seven years? – and full privatisation. A drastically slimmed down BBC should either become a customer-owned co-op, or float on the stock exchange and be allowed to raise equity financing.

It should admit that most linear TV channels will shut, reinvent itself primarily as a streaming app, selling subscriptions abroad to finance a huge investment programme at home. The new boss will also need to make a massive effort at diversifying its recruitment: it cannot just employ Left-liberals and Remainers.

Will anybody be able to pull off such a turnaround? We must hope so, for otherwise, stripped of its legal privileges, shorn of its quasi-mythical cultural role, the BBC will slowly fade into irrelevance.