Why didn’t Bridget Harris just slap Lord Rennard?

When I was promoted to being editor of a programme at the BBC, back in the late 1990s, my line manager came and talked to me in a deeply mysterious manner for a number of troubling minutes. He was wary and elliptical and I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. There were things you could do as a deputy editor, he told me, that you couldn’t do as an editor. But he didn’t tell me what those things were, those things which I now couldn’t do. I just sat and nodded wisely. Only later did I realise that this was his ‘Don’t shag the staff’ speech. That was the thing you couldn’t do — the staff. I hadn’t been aware that as a deputy editor I could do the staff. I wish I had known. Quite horrible to think that this opportunity was now denied to me.

I was reminded of this by the continuing Lord Rennard saga, which has been running now for a little over ten years and rather wonderfully shows no signs of abating.