Could this week spell the end for Nadine Dorries?

Opinion

In her quest to wreck the BBC and Channel 4, the Culture Secretary will never be changed by facts or arguments. Could this week’s elections spell the beginning of the end?

In case there is any lingering doubt, the Government’s approach to long-awaited legislation for the media, and public service broadcasting in particular, is now crystal clear.

You make an assertion based on little or no evidence, announce a consultation or a review and then proceed to ignore the overwhelming findings of the consultation, as in the case of privatisation of Channel 4.

The review of the future of BBC funding won’t happen just yet, but Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has already pronounced the licence fee dead after 2026 when the Corporation’s current Royal Charter runs out. This is all before the terms of reference into a review of the issue have even been set out.

As expected the Government’s “vision” for the future of the broadcasting sector published last week ploughed ahead with plans for “ a change of ownership of Channel 4” even though the White Paper admitted that 56,293 responses to the consultation had demonstrated  “a clear strength of feeling on this issue.” That is one way of dealing with the inconvenience that, despite absurdly loaded questions, around 96 per cent of the responses opposed the Government plan.

All ignored. There it is now in the White Paper. Channel 4 is going to be privatised “to ensure it can continue to thrive and grow its impact for years to come, as part of the wider public service broadcasting ecology in the UK.”

Dorries does not inspire trust

The Dorries introduction to the White Paper, complete with the portrait picture of the winning smile and the bold sub-Truss red dress, is extraordinary.

There is a hymn of praise to the global success of the UK’s creative economy with Britain’s public service broadcasters the key to that success sitting at the centre of this.

Yet while Channel 4 gets its appointment with the tumbrils there is not a mention of the BBC. It’s as if she cannot bring herself to mention the BBC word in the midst of such stunning success.

It’s very likely that Dorries would have taken more radical, urgent action against the BBC if she had been able to. She is stymied, for now, by the Royal Charter and the fact that the Mid-Term review is not designed to look at the financing of the Corporation.

All we are left with at the moment is the note that it is the Government’s intention to carry out a review of the licence fee funding model ahead of the next Charter period with the detailed plans for the review expected “in the coming months.”

No problem there, at least in theory. Of course there should be a review and a detailed look at what practical alternatives to a universal licence fee can be found, if any, against a background of developing technologies and changing viewer habits.

The problem is that Nadine Dorries does not engender trust in either her intentions or competence.

She recently added to her lustre for believing that Channel 4 was in receipt of public funds to claiming that Channel 5 had been successfully privatised three or five years ago. It wasn’t a slip of the tongue. She said it twice.

Channel 5 was, of course, launched as a commercial channel in 1997 and what she might have been referring to in a garbled way was the fact that it was bought from Richard Desmond’s Northern & Shell by Viacom (now Paramount) in 2014.

Things got worse for Dorries this week when she shared a Daily Mail picture of Keir Starmer having a curry with Frank Dobson as apparent evidence of the Labour Leader breaking Covid lockdown restrictions. Dobson died in 2019.

Little wonder then few are willing to cut Dorries any slack or believe she will approach the future funding of the BBC in an open-minded way.

Don’t expect a public consultation

You can be certain of one thing: there will be no public consultation because of the danger, as with Channel 4, of the public coming up with the  “wrong” answer.

You can virtually guarantee that there will be an advisory committee, whose names may or may not be made public, and that it will be packed with opponents of the licence fee. David Elstein could be trotted out one more time to chair it.

The real worry will be the terms of reference. Such a review should be an open-ended investigation into the future funding of the BBC looking at all options, including a reformed licence fee.

Instead it is very likely to focus entirely on alternatives to the licence fee, many of whom have been known about for years, subjected to scrutiny and rejected as being less effective than the licence fee for funding a universal public service broadcaster.

And that is a key to any comprehensive review. It should look first at what exactly is the service that is to be financed.

You could easily turn the BBC into a voluntary subscription service such as Netflix – if you want to destroy it as a public service broadcaster and turn it into an expensive rump only affordable by the relatively well off on the way to social irrelevance.

On a similar intellectual level to her knowledge about Channel 4 and Channel 5, Dorries apparently thinks the BBC could be turned into a mini-British version of Netflix.

The Netflix she is now talking about is the Netflix that is cutting production budgets as growth in subscriber numbers goes into reverse and the company’s share price tanks amidst mountains of debt.

One of the best articles to be written on the current controversy over the BBC and its licence fee has just been written by Clare Foges.

It is important because of who she is – a fully paid up Conservative – and where it appeared – The Times, which has been hostile to the licence fee and sometimes also the BBC, for decades.

Foges argues that she no longer trusts her party with the future of the BBC and sees scrapping the licence fee as a national act of self-harm.

“It is an act of national self-harm, like the French attacking their wine industry or the US its film industry. But hey it might win the Tories 17 more votes in the Red Wall,” Foges argues.

Votes in the end could make all the differences although few are  going to use their votes to save either Channel 4 from privatisation or the BBC licence fee from oblivion.

Dorries will never be changed by facts or rational arguments. But the process of taking her away from a post where she could do so much damage to Britain’s real cultural heritage could begin tomorrow in the local elections and gather strength thereafter.

Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for The Media Leader on Wednesdays.

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