A beautiful noise rang out last week in the wake of the news that the government is considering Charles Moore to become the new chairman of the BBC and Paul Dacre to be the head of the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom. The noise was the sound of the British left wailing that toys they thought were theirs alone might now (under a Conservative government) finally go to identifiable conservatives.
The former editor of the Guardian Alan Rusbridger shrieked that ‘this is what an oligarchy looks like’. This and similar tweets were presumably sent from the lodgings of the Oxford college that Rusbridger was made principal of five years ago. Others who screamed themselves sick included BBC employees who briefed that Moore’s appointment ‘would shatter morale. People will leave.’ For there can be no greater way to refute accusations of institutional leftism in the BBC than for the corporation’s employees to threaten to resign en masse in response to a conservative appointment.
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