Channel 4 – and a knight in shining European armour?

Curiously, the Brexit debate and the disruptions that are likely to accompany the June referendum, could actually save Channel 4 from the threat of privatisation, writes Raymond Snoddy.

The divisions over the important public issue are getting deeper. Harsh words are being spoken. Reputations are being shredded and there is talk of betrayal and disloyalty in the air. Revenge cannot be far away.

No, we are not talking about Brexit – at least not for now – but the growing bitterness over the Government’s plans to privatise Channel 4.

At the heart of a political storm, chief executives facing an uncertain future at the hands of Government are often cautious, hoping to wield influence behind closed doors. Don’t antagonise in public, let private lobbying do the talking for you, is the common wisdom.

David Abraham, chief executive of Channel 4, is clearly not one of those and is obviously made of sterner stuff.

Should privatisation go ahead he will have little option but to resign.

For at a conference organised by research group Enders Analysis, Abraham could not have spoken more plainly.

If Channel 4 did not exist in its current form, a Government that cares about innovation and the creative industries would be looking to invent it, Abraham argued. The channel was good for UK business and privatisation was a solution in search of a problem.

“A proposal that comes from nowhere – that did not feature in the Conservative party manifesto, which was indeed, specifically rejected before the election – is suddenly brought forward. Then all goes quiet,” Abraham noted.

He reserves his greatest ire for former Channel 4 grandees, Lord Grade and Luke Johnson, who he denounced as “the flip and flop of British broadcasting.”

As former Channel 4 chief executive Michael Grade energetically fought off a previous attempt to privatise the channel, and now is in favour of it, will he turn up as chairman of a consortium to bid for Channel 4 should the chance become available to create as he has put it a “media powerhouse”?

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Lord Grade has allegedly been seen recently going into the Treasury. It could of course be a case of mistaken identity and even if it is not, we have no notion of what the business might have been.

Abraham laid into Lord Grade’s recent business record, arguing that having done a good job at Channel 4 “success in building ‘powerhouses’ has not exactly trailed him since.”

The Channel 4 chief executive accused Grade of changing his mind more often than he changes his socks and advised him to go off and enjoy his Channel 4 pension.

Sounds like both flip and flop.

As for Luke Johnson, chairman of Channel 4 from 2004 to 2010, he presided over “the begging bowl” era looking for subsidies for the channel either from the tax payer or carved out from the BBC to meet a £100 million funding gap that turned out to mythical.

Abraham noted Johnson’s long history of defending the Channel 4 financial model, including in September before a House of Lords select committee.

Now Johnson has said the privatisation option should be thoroughly explored and has questioned the need for both the BBC and Channel 4 to be publicly owned.

Could it be that Johnson, the serial entrepreneur, has a plan to bid for a Channel 4 licence?

More flip than flop.

Meanwhile the theory is that the idea of privatising Channel 4 is surviving for now – just – because it is the only way that Culture Secretary John Whittingdale has of making his mark – and privatisation reflects his ideological instincts. He has been edged sideways in important matters, such as the future of the BBC by Chancellor Osborne.

Curiously it is the very Brexit debate and the disruptions that are likely to accompany the 23 June referendum, whatever the outcome, that could save Channel 4.

If the Tory Brexit rebels, including if Whittingdale were to win, then the huge disruption to almost every aspect of the UK’s political, legal, business and trade systems would be so enormous that the fate of Channel 4 would appear to be little more than an unnecessary distraction.

If, and this is a much more likely outcome despite the raucous cries of most of the press, David Cameron wins the referendum, even if not by much, there will inevitably be political bloodletting and vengeance.

A summer reshuffle will remove some of the more elderly Europhobes to underpin the Cameron victory. They will be replaced by up-and-coming ministers who have remained loyal to the Prime Minister in his hour of need.

Justice Minister Michael Gove will probably be important enough to survive the night-of-the-long-knives while nothing needs to be done to Boris Johnson who will simply remain MP for Uxbridge so he can enjoy the fruits of his folly.

As for Whittingdale, his return to the backbenches – from which many believe he should never have emerged in the first place – will be assured.

Will a new Culture Secretary really want to commit himself to such a controversial item as the privatisation of Channel 4, a move that will inevitably undermine the channel’s remit?

Will Prime Minister Cameron, who presumably will want to try to unite the Conservative Party after the Cabinet reshuffle and want to start work on a new legislative programme, really want to push ahead with such a divisive issue?

In the greater scheme of things, the privatisation of Channel 4 is a second or maybe even third tier issue. But it is still a symbolic one for the Conservative Party.

Channel 4 and the attendant rise of the independent production sector was a success of Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative Government and was given legislative birth by her deputy Lord Willie Whitelaw. Why would David Cameron want to tangle with that legacy when he no longer has any obligation to spare the blushes of John Whittingdale by allowing him to have a legislative bauble?

Channel 4 is working well, is self-sustaining and a problem to no-one. As David Abraham says, privatisation is a solution looking for a problem.

Come July and the “the solution” could have finally gone away thanks to the failure of Brexit leaving supporters, such as John Whittingdale, clinging to the wreckage.