The culture secretary’s plan to freeze funding and axe the licence fee is pure political vandalism
This Sunday, culture secretary Nadine Dorries tweeted out a death sentence for one of the most respected and popular broadcasters in the world. “This licence fee announcement will be the last,” she wrote, along with a link to the Mail on Sunday’s splash. “The days of the elderly being threatened with prison sentences and bailiffs knocking on doors, are over. Time now to discuss and debate new ways of funding, supporting and selling great British content.”
She was doing her master’s bidding, as Boris Johnson thrashes around for anything to shift the narrative away from his own tumbling fortunes. Johnson demands “red meat” to mollify his MPs, who are in savage mood after a harrowing weekend in their constituencies listening to local people demanding his head on a plate. Axing the BBC is easy pickings, he thinks. But he may turn out to be as wrong about that as he is on just about everything else.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
