“The choice is between BBC apparatchiks: Caroline Thomson, Helen Boaden, George Entwistle and Tim Davie. I’m told Ms Boaden may lean fractionally more to the Right than the others, but none of them could be fairly described as conservative with a big or small ‘c’, and it is unimaginable that anyone of such a persuasion could become director-general of the BBC.
Mark Thompson himself admitted 18 months ago that the Corporation was guilty of a ‘massive’ Left-wing bias in the past, while contending it is now a broader church. I don’t see much evidence of that. Sceptics will say the BBC is so innately Left-of-centre that it wouldn’t make any difference if a full-blooded Tory were put in charge.
And before we run away with the idea that its quite recently installed chairman, Lord Patten, could be so described, let it be remembered that he was a leading ‘wet’ and anti-Thatcherite who resided on the far reaches of the liberal wing of the Tory Party, which was several degrees to the Left of what used to be called ‘Right-wing Labour’.”
Glover places the blame on the gutless Conservatives for allowing the likes of the BBC to get away with their visceral bias. He surely has a point as has been discussed in these pages.