I won’t be applying to be director-general of the BBC

Despite huge public pressure, I shall not be applying to be director-general of the BBC. It was kind of Tony Hall to stand down early, forgoing next year’s centenary plaudits, so that I could rise on the wave of post-Brexit fervour. But no: I am not a woman and have no plans to become one and, under the BBC’s diversity rules, uniformity of gender is required. If I did, per impossibile, get the job, I would ensure that Nick Robinson, who has such a feel for excluded northerners, would relocate to Manchester, thus counteracting the London bias of the political coverage, but even that would not be enough. The truth is that no director-general, not even the ticks-all-boxes Sharon White, can lead the BBC’s monopoly through to its second century. The technology no longer works; nor does the concept. Bureaucracy is the enemy of creativity. The BBC can only be a bureaucracy.