Hector Drummond wonders if the Overton Window has moved far enough that the BBC might lose its sacred status:
In a notorious talk given to Conservative Future in 2009, Sean Gabb made the following radical recommendation:
On the first day of your government, you should close down the BBC. You should take it off air. You should disclaim its copyrights. You should throw all its staff into the street … You must shut it down – and shut it down at once.
I have for many years been torn between thinking this a good idea, and thinking that it would result in such uproar that the government would immediately fall, and be replaced by a new government who would restore the BBC. But the question was purely abstract anyway, because no Conservative government would even contemplate doing such a thing. No Conservative government was even going to contemplate taking away the licence fee.
But finally, after three years of disgraceful conduct — well, extra disgraceful conduct — the future of the BBC is finally an issue that that can be broached. It’s finally an issue that can be talked about without people throwing up their hands in horror and demanding you be thrown out of wherever you are. People will listen sympathetically if you suggest that the BBC can’t go on like it has been. People will join in enthusiastically if you say that Channel 4 is a disgrace that should no longer be state-funded. Well, not if you’re in the common room. But in the ordinary pubs around the country they will. They will at the dinner parties that are being held outside the M25. And even some inside it.
So what should be done? The conventional conservative/libertarian idea is that the BBC should be moved to a subscription model. The more radical Gabb idea is not one that has ever been talked about much. In fact, it’s an idea that until recently would have shocked most people, even most conservatives. (If you read to the end of the Gabb article, you’ll see that the young conservatives were themselves outraged by Gabb’s idea). But actually it’s a very good idea. Because here’s the thing. If you privatise the BBC, it may do very well for itself, and then it would be free to spin the news far more outrageously than it currently does.
More recently than Dr. Gabb, Richard Delingpole made a suggestion that I stole for my headline:
Call me a Radical, but I wouldn’t just stop the licence fee. I’d close down the BBC. Sack everyone. Demolish the buildings. Salt the ground.
— Richard Delingpole (@DickDelingpole) November 24, 2019
So the idea is no longer so alien. Particularly amongst younger people, who just don’t watch the BBC any more. They generally don’t watch much TV at all, they prefer YouTube and TikTok (which are filled with rubbish, it has to be said, but that’s another story), but they especially don’t watch the BBC (or channel 4). So most young people won’t even notice if the BBC is closed down, although about thirty sociology undergraduates will eventually tweet about it once their lecturers tell them what’s happened, and then the Guardian will have a fit and try to make it a big story, but there’ll be no BBC to amplify that, so it won’t be that effective. And the other channels are unlikely to shed too many tears over the shutdown of a subsidised rival (although I expect that the news staff will as they’re all lefties now).
