Will the Tories attack the ‘bloated’ BBC?

Does Cameron think the Beeb impedes fair competition? Will he cut the DG’s salary? The closer Cameron comes to power, the more the Corporation panics, says Anne McElvoy

What does David Cameron really think of the BBC? A spectre (or several, perhaps) haunts the taupe corridors of White City, Television Centre and Broadcasting house as a likely Tory victory grows closer. Memories abound of Mrs Thatcher’s Peacock Report, which was intended to begin the dismantling of the licence fee, of Norman Tebbit’s 1986 broadside, unleashed by coverage of the Libyan embassy siege, but really a Kulturkampf against a perceived left-liberal bias.

The BBC may not have had an untroubled relationship with New Labour — Alastair Campbell and the Today programme’s coverage of the missing Iraq WMD saw to that. But it has lived in a kind of psychological comfort zone with a Labour government, which approved licence fee rises without undue rigour and shared a sense of a liberal mission with the BBC.