Emily Maitlis broke the rules – but this is win-win for her, lose-lose for the BBC

Her Newsnight monologue was a flagrant breach of impartiality. The real question is why she did it

BBC Newsnight is a late show. Not many people watch it. So it seems worth repeating in full the introduction to Tuesday night’s programme, delivered by the presenter, Emily Maitlis: “Good evening. Dominic Cummings broke the rules. The country can see that, and it is shocked that the Government cannot. The longer ministers, and the Prime Minister, tell us he worked within them, the more angry the response to this scandal is likely to be.

“He was the man, remember, who always ‘got’ the public mood, who tagged the lazy label of ‘elite’ on those who disagreed. He should understand that public mood now. One of fury, contempt, and anguish. He made those who struggled to keep to the rules feel like fools. And has allowed many more to assume they can now flout them.

“The Prime Minister knows all this, but despite the resignation of one minister, growing unease from his backbenchers, a dramatic early warning from the polls, and a deep national disquiet, Boris Johnson has chosen to ignore it. Tonight we consider what this blind loyalty tells us about the inner workings of Number 10. We do not expect to be joined by a Government minister, but that won’t stop us asking the questions.”

Some will agree with the Maitlis view, some won’t. But I suspect that those reading it here will agree that a view is what it is. It is not a statement of unquestionable facts, or a balanced introduction to any ensuing report. It is a denunciation.

Her first full sentence – “Dominic Cummings broke the rules” – preempts what the entire argument has been about. In her second sentence, she purports to tell us what the country thinks and feels. In her third – because of what she said in her first – she implies that Boris Johnson and his ministers lied. And so on.

If I said that hers was a fierce condemnation of Messrs Cummings and Johnson on moral grounds, giving no chink of light to different opinions, and presenting Ms Maitlis’s own opinion as objective truth and the opinion of the entire nation, I would be indulging in good old British understatement. What she did is not allowed under the BBC’S own laws, known internally as “Ed Pol”. She has broken the rules of public-service broadcasting far more unquestionably than ever Dominic Cummings broke the rules of lockdown.

So even the BBC felt it had to do something. First it announced that Ms Maitlis had indeed breached rules: “We believe the introduction … did not meet our standards of due impartiality.” Later it gave further reasons: “By presenting a matter of public and political debate as if the country were unanimous in its view, we consider Newsnight risked giving the perception that the BBC was taking sides”. I like “risked”. There was no risk whatever: that perception was certain, just as it is widely perceived that it is darker at midnight than at noon.

Ms Maitlis must have seen this, too. Such people are often (and often rightly) accused of living in a bubble. Even after the EU referendum and the December general election result, they seem unaware that many millions of people do not share their views. But she is an intelligent woman and she must have known that, if charged, she would be found guilty. So the interesting question is, why did she do it? Perhaps, acting like her estimation of Mr Cummings, she felt it was all right to make “those who struggled to keep to the rules feel like fools”.

Long ago, I remember the novelist Kingsley Amis telling me that the trouble with broadcasters, especially BBC ones, is that they were “much more concerned with ‘How will it go down at the club?’ than with the viewers”. His expression “the club” now sounds a bit old-fashioned, but the point holds. Star presenters think more about congratulations from colleagues and Twitter followers for their “courage” than about the licence-fee payers (almost all of us aged over 40) who pay their salaries. They bask in their peers’ praise for “telling truth to power”, yet it is they that are the unanswerable power in the realm.

As well as the adulation, there is the rivalry. One should not think of BBC presenters these days as servants of the corporation, let alone of the viewers. They are stars, with their agents, their speakers’ fees, their Instagram accounts, their profiles to consider. How are they doing against other stars, both within the BBC and outside? Who is beating Huw or Piers or Victoria or Nick? Who looks “braver” (ie, more conformist) in attacking Boris? And who, in a world in which almost all their programmes are declining in importance, can evade the lengthening shadows on Sunset Boulevard? Ms Maitlis did not win the Question Time role when David Dimbleby retired: now she can find a different way to shine.

So perhaps she thinks the fame accruing will compensate for any discomfort felt by her employer or disapproval from the viewers. She may even calculate that she will ultimately win. She could be right.

Already you can see her defenders lining up. They cannot say Ms Maitlis is a woman persecuted by men, since her boss, Fran Unsworth, the head of news, is a woman. But they are claiming she is being unfairly victimised against “misogynist” Andrew Neil, who has allegedly also perpetrated bias. Last year, after the BBC censured Naga Munchetty for comments when presenting BBC Breakfast biased against Donald Trump, there was such an outcry among colleagues that the Directorgeneral himself overturned the ruling.

Ms Maitlis might well win such a reprieve, perhaps slightly qualified by bureaucratic mumbling about “fresh guidelines” on BBC impartiality on social media which have been commissioned from its former director of global news, Richard Sambrook. Then Ms Valiant-for-truth will have prevailed against the “suits” and the Government. She will have been allowed to state, as fact, that Dominic Cummings did break the rules and that Boris lied.

Even if she loses, and the ruling against her stands, she is most unlikely to be demoted, let alone sacked. The suits will be portrayed as having given in to Government pressure. In due time, Emily will be promoted to a show with more viewers than Newsnight, or hired by a rival channel.

Win-win for her: lose-lose for the BBC. Either it punishes Ms Maitlis and is painted as the establishment stooge, or it caves in and excuses her, thus proving its internal weakness. If the latter, it then confronts a Government which, more than any before it, does not believe in the licence fee. Since the clear intention of Ms Maitlis and of most BBC coverage has been to destroy the Government’s reputation as it tries to overcome a deadly plague, the Government is now less friendly to the fee than ever.

The best thing for Boris to do right now is to let the BBC stew in its own existential juice, and strike when Covid-19 has passed. In the meantime, we who must, by law, pay for the BBC would like coverage that helps the country get out of the nightmare rather than deepening it. This week, the BBC led with the Cummings story every day until yesterday. In the alternative world of Britain as it is, the signs were of a tentative return to the beginnings of normality. That is news, but you did not hear it on the BBC.