The BBC is an imperfect but beloved institution – sadly this might not stop the Tories

Editorial: If Boris Johnson does smash it up, there will be real public grief over the emasculation of a glorious part of public life

As with the monarchy, people just like the BBC. It’s part of the British identity (Getty)

We are told that Boris Johnson is coming after the BBC. There will be a consultation on the licence fee and the intention, a “senior source” has told The Sunday Times, is to “whack it”.

(Even without the belligerent, juvenile language, the identity of the “senior source” would be obvious enough. Dominic Cummings has banned all government advisers from speaking to journalists. He has not yet extended the ban to himself.)

Politicians’ hostility to a potentially hostile media is nothing new. But the war on the BBC is about more than that. Brexit has purged the Conservatives of its moderate influence. David Gauke, Ken Clarke, Dominic Grieve, Amber Rudd, the list goes on. They are no longer MPs because they could not countenance inflicting no-deal Brexit, and its immense harm, on the voters who never voted for it. They since have been replaced by more pliant alternatives, with the extremists still at the controls.

The BBC, and specifically the licence fee, is something of an affront to ultra-free-market worshippers. A handful of people are still jailed, every year, for not paying the licence fee (or more specifically, for not paying the fines that have accrued for non-payment). That much of that money then goes to paying large salaries to football pundits and ballroom dancers is, to a certain extent, indefensible.

But the BBC is principally a public service broadcaster, providing news and public interest journalism. Its dramas and entertainment, so the thinking goes, are designed to grow the audience, and the brand, so that its journalism reaches more people (the now dying business model of the newspaper works in much the same way. The power of important journalism is augmented by recipes, puzzles, the weather and the rest).

But back to the ultra-free markets. The trouble is that many ultra-free-marketeer Tories do not comprehend that their grand idea has its limits. Chris Grayling’s love of Brexit is driven by a loathing of regulation. If there were food shortages after Brexit, he once said the solution would just be that “British farmers will grow more”. It makes sense in a GCSE economics lesson. In the real world, it doesn’t work like that.

Trouble is, the BBC is not the only slightly intellectually indefensible institution at the bedrock of British life. Most countries, everywhere in the world, have come to accept that monarchy is an idea that can no longer be defended.

Its defence, in Britain, is that the people just like it. It’s part of the British identity. And the same is exactly true of the BBC.

Adam Smith-venerating Tories stand ready to smash it up on the altar of their one overly simplified idea. The problem they are up against is that the BBC has approval among the public. It may be imperfect but it is much loved.

If Boris Johnson does smash it up, there will be real public grief over the emasculation of a glorious part of public life. He may well do so anyway. In Dominic Cummings he has a chief of staff who has no problem with breaking things and upsetting people. Throughout history, most disastrous outcomes have been the unintended consequences of the big ideas pursued by supremely arrogant people with an intellect that is too moderate to see its limitations.

The government certainly has not just the numbers in parliament, but the entirely supine individuals, to do as it pleases. And democracy is a blunt thing. Breaking the BBC may not be sufficient to lose it an election. There will be other issues at stake then.

The fallout from the actions of the entirely dismal people currently running the country have already been immense enough. And there is no reason to imagine it is bluffing about this. The BBC should brace for its destruction. And we should all start mourning its passing. Rather like EU membership, as Joni Mitchell once sang, we won’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone.