The right qualifications no longer appear to count for top jobs in British public life
There’s a chance the revelation that Boris Johnson will make Charles Moore, his friend, colleague in the Tory press and fellow traveller with the conspiratorial right, the new chairman of the BBC will turn out to be false. There’s a chance the PM has hitherto invisible red lines and would find such unashamed cronyism beneath even his shattered dignity. There’s a chance that the government’s “formal process” for deciding public appointments won’t be a sham.
This side of the grave, there’s always a chance. But one week on, Johnson and Moore have not denied the story and it is clear that the government is, once again, considering erasing the dividing lines between politics and public service, professional life and private opinion. It looks as if it wants to carry on ensuring that only those who support the regime’s ideology are favoured, by handing the BBC to a crank who gives every indication of wanting to abolish it.
