Will Labour Restore the BBC to the National Broadcaster We Need It To Be – Or Believe It Can Benefit from a Subservient Corporation Afraid to Hold Power to Account?

Labour’s landslide victory in July’s General Election has posed some difficult issues for the BBC, reeling as it is from its very poor record of holding power to account over the past 14 years of Conservative rule. Keir Starmer’s Government will also have to tackle some difficult issues concerning the corporation’s long-term future and funding.

The BBC has spent the past decade-and-a-half cowering in impotent fear of Conservative Governments that used squeezed funding and existential threats to keep it docile. Its leadership – under Director-General Lord Tony Hall and now Tim Davie – chose a path of appeasement, desperate to avoid any boat-rocking incidents and pathetically keen to avoid upsetting the ruling party.

This has left the BBC in a difficult position during a tricky transition period, showing it to be unsure of itself and its journalistic role. It remains vulnerable to the continuing influence of Tory ‘true-believers’ and fellow travellers appointed to key positions within its structure who are still in place. This has already resulted in a default position of largely following the agenda set by the UK’s predominantly right-wing press. Some of the BBC’s editorial leaders do this through conviction, others because they are too frightened to do anything but follow the tabloid crowd.

The most prominent agent of direct Conservative influence was, and still is, Sir Robbie Gibb – Tory Prime Minister Theresa May’s former Director of Communications in Downing Street – appointed to a key position on the BBC’s Board with responsibility for enforcing impartiality. 

Previously a programme editor at Newsnight and Daily Politics, he played an important role internally in promoting the Brexit agenda. I have written in these pages previously about other senior figures who helped to drive that agenda – and later helped to gloss over the failings of Boris Johnson’s Government and its misdeeds during the pandemic. Some of those have moved on, but several, including Gibb, are still exerting a malign influence.

Perhaps the person who played the biggest on-screen role in this was Laura Kuenssberg, whose tenure as the BBC’s Political Editor, I have consistently argued, was a disaster for the BBC and the country. 

Too close to power, she sacrificed basic journalist principles in order to gain access to the then Prime Minister and the figures around him. Kuenssberg’s rebuttal of the story about Dominic Cummings’ trip to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight during the Coronavirus crisis, the refusal to cover Johnson’s affair with businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri (despite a clear public interest in doing so), and her reluctance to hold his Government to account over the ‘VIP’ procurement lane for obtaining PPE, were all prominent and damning failures of BBC journalism.  

Since being moved on from the role in 2022, Kuenssberg has hosted an eponymous political chat show – which I think it’s safe to say has done little to rescue her reputation. 

One small but telling example of the programme’s tone occurred when the journalist was recently interviewing Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey on the Sunday after the election. In her introduction to the conversation, she highlighted the party’s success in winning 72 seats – but couldn’t help sneering “congratulations, I suppose”. It came across as grudging and suggested bias.

Then in September and early October, Kuenssberg and the BBC relentlessly promoted her forthcoming interview with Boris Johnson – who was to be given an opportunity to promote his memoirs in a primetime slot on BBC One. Kuenssberg cancelled the interview after she revealed that she had sent Johnson her pre-interview briefing notes “by mistake”.

The exact nature and mechanism of this mistake has not been explained – but it is more than an embarrassment: it stands as a powerful symbol of the BBC’s (and Kuenssberg’s) abject failure ever to hold Boris Johnson to account.  

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New Labour’s Warmer Welcome

The BBC now has the problem of adjusting from the fear-based control wielded by the Conservatives to handling and covering a Labour Government.

In opposition, Labour talked about the need to strengthen the BBC’s independence, perhaps by extending the period of Royal Charter renewal from every 10 years to 15. The corporation will have taken some comfort from those positive noises, but exactly how those good intentions translate into practical action remains to be seen.

The Charter is up for renewal in 2027, and a mid-term review is to be conducted that will focus on governance and regulatory arrangements. It will not look at the BBC’s mission, purpose, or the method by which it is funded, meaning that the licence fee is safe for now.  

The BBC has not always had a comfortable relationship with Labour prime ministers. Perhaps most famously it fell out with the Blair Government over the Iraq War, something that resulted in a judge-led inquiry and the resignation of the then Director-General Greg Dyke.

But, after Tony Blair’s first election win in 1997, I remember BBC managers telling newsroom journalists that Labour’s large mandate meant that they should be wary of being too harsh on the new administration, too soon. They framed Blair’s victory as evidence of a new centre-left consensus in the UK that the BBC – the national broadcaster of record – should be wary of challenging too vigorously, too early.

It seems that everything is very different now. 

Closely following the agenda set by Britain’s right-wing newspapers, there has been no slack cut for Starmer or his ministers over issues such as gifts, the cutting of the winter fuel allowance, or former Downing Street Chief of Staff Sue Gray’s pay.Most of this has been fair enough – we need our governments, of whatever stripe, to be held accountable and to justify their actions. But, given the Government only took office in July, some of this coverage has contrasted starkly with the BBC’s failure to treat the tenures of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak in the same manner.

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Starmer’s Opportunity

Another continuing sign of weakness is the BBC’s choice of guests for its daily politics programmes, which has not improved since Labour’s election win. 

We still routinely see and hear from figures from right-wing think tanks, the funding of which is unclear and the academic credentials questionable.

Bizarrely, Truss’ former Chancellor and now former Conservative MP Kwasi Kwarteng is routinely given a platform to provide his views – this is a man who helped tank the UK economy after just a few weeks in office.

BBC airtime is precious and should not be wasted on people whose insights are demonstrably worthless.

But none of this would be as much of a problem for the BBC if it had done a better job of shining a light on years of Conservative corruption, dishonesty, and incompetence.

There is much for the BBC to do, but Labour also has an opportunity to make a difference. It should start by clearing out the BBC’s Board, but in its mid-term review of the Royal Charter it needs to go further by setting up robust mechanisms to ensure the broadcaster’s efficiency and genuinely protect its reputation for impartiality, which has been so badly damaged.

Looking further ahead, if it guaranteed secure and adequate (by which I mean significantly increased) funding for the corporation, the Government could free the BBC from the fear that has made it so feeble in the face of successive hostile governments.  

The corporation should do itself a favour by cutting back the excessive salaries of its senior executives and ‘talent’.

A strong, independent BBC is good for Britain, democracy, and for world journalism. Labour could do what is right or it could instead retreat to a position in which it feels that it too can benefit from a weak and subservient national broadcaster, frightened to hold power to account.

We will learn a lot about the nature of Starmer’s Government by how it treats the BBC in the months and years ahead.

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