‘The government are entitled to pry into our bedrooms’ — there is nothing wrong with that. ‘The government is entitled to pry into our bedrooms’ — there is nothing wrong with that either. In British English (as opposed to American English) collective nouns may take either a singular or a plural verb. Americans prefer singularity.
In a publication like The Spectator, conventions have to be adopted to keep the herbaceous borders of language neat. It is house style to use a singular verb with collective nouns such as government, BBC, nation.
If in British English it is normal to regard a company as plural (‘British Leyland are defunct’), that convention extends in colloquial usage to the word denoting its line of business. So we say, ‘The bank are complaining about my overdraft.’
Even in formal usage, fixed forms are demanded by familiarity.
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