Why this should be David Dimbleby’s finest hour

The obvious can be so obvious that we discount it, supposing that other people must have thought of it already. There is an obvious candidate for chairman of the BBC governors. I have no idea whether he is going for it, but if not then he should be and people should be telling him so.

David Dimbleby would be at the same time a solid and an inspired choice for the helm of an anxious public body going though tempestuous times and in need of the confidence of public, politicians and its own employees. And, no, I have not just had lunch with Mr Dimbleby. I do know his programme’s editor (who is not the originator of this idea) but have never spoken with or met Dimbleby other than as one of the panellists on his BBC2 Question Time programmes. I know him only in the way most Spectator readers (and, for instance, the three million television viewers who watched Question Time the day after Lord Hutton reported) feel we do — as someone we implicitly trust: a holder-of-the-ring; sharp-minded, rigorous and authoritative, but gentle-mannered and fair. Without losing his edge he has become a fatherly figure: gentlemanly, almost old-fashioned, but nobody’s fool and not one to let politicians pull the wool over his eyes.

There can never have been a time when the BBC has been in greater need of a conspicuous display of these qualities. I realise that news and current affairs is only a part of the Corporation’s output, but Mr Dimbleby’s cultural qualifications are evident and his own programme marries serious with popular broadcasting: he shows no bias against entertainment. Meanwhile, politics are the rocks through which the Corporation has the immediate need to steer. After Hutton, after its bruising encounter with Alastair Campbell, after losing a chairman and director-general overnight, and when anxiety that the Corporation might be ‘cowed’ by government has been so widely felt that ministers are embarrassed by the idea, it is important, not least to the government itself, to find a chairman thought able to ‘stand up to’ politicians.