I often say that Mrs. Thatcher’s greatest mistake was not to privatize the BBC when she probably could have pushed it through in 1987 or 88. For nigh on thirty years the BBC has been the PR wing of the Labour Party, or occasionally the Liberal Democrats when Labour wasn’t left-wing enough. Now, it seems, the Tories have realized something has to be done about this. I knew the man behind the move, Jeremy Hunt MP, quite well at Oxford and I have to say that not only is he the nicest person I have ever met in politics (present company excepted, of course), but he has the considerable steel in him needed to see this through.

Tim Mongtomerie comments, and in so doing explains why this matters over here:

What we need, as former BBC journalist Robin Aitken has proposed, is a new licence fee funded broadcaster that is based on the British system of getting to the truth’ via having opposing arguments test one another. Our judicial system (defence and prosecution) and parliamentary system (opposition and government) is based on this adversarial principle. At the moment, the BBC is largely based on the French inquisitorial system whereby an expert searches for truth. The trouble is that the BBC expert is up to eleven times as likely to be liberal as conservative. That’s why, in the last 24 hours, the BBC’s coverage of the Bali summit has been disgraceful. There has been next to no attempt to give fair coverage to the Washington perspective. The Europeans have been presented as the good guys in wanting to address the issue (even though they’re better at signing treaties than meeting their obligations under them) and the Americans are the bad guys (although Washington is investing hugely in clean technologies).

For another expose of the BBC’s appalling Bali coverage, see John Redwood MP.