CRAIG'S SUNDAY EDITORIAL

"Anonymous said...
Is it not about time Cameron showed that he has the courage and willingness to take on the bbc over its obvious bias?"
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Why are Cameron's Conservatives (with rare exceptions like John Redwood - who put in an exceptional performance on Newsnight this week - and the man-of-the-moment Dan Hannan) so soft on the BBC and its pro-Left bias?

As I've shown, Conservative interviewees were more than twice as likely to be interrupted by BBC presenters in July than Labour ones, and three times more likely than Lib Dems. And yet, they take it all on the chin, without demur. UKIP protest, the Tories stay stum. Why?

They must realise it (and if they don't they're strange, deluded people!), but maybe they think, by remaining quiet and occasionally getting senior Conservatives (such as Ed Vaizey) to say how much they love the BBC, that they can keep the organisation's hostility towards them at a low level of intensity, thus preventing an all-out-and-ongoing campaign against them. An analogy might be drawn between this attitude and that of a bullying victim. Do you confront the bully (or complain about the bully) or do you do nothing about him out of the fear that, if you do something, the bullying might get even worse? Well, the BBC is bullying the Conservative Party and the bias is already pretty damn shocking.

Last month's onslaught over the Coulson 'affair' and this week's frenzy over Alan Duncan and Daniel Hannan should have proved to them that the stay-quiet strategy is not working. 'All-out campaigns' have already been launched. Moreover, as I hope this blog is making very plain (and the Biased BBC website makes just as plain, in its own way), the anti-Tory bias is already 'ongoing'. How much worse does it have to get before the Conservative Party speaks out?
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The crucial point about the seeming cowardice of the Conservative Party (unless it's a Baldrick-style 'cunning plan' - and if it is it's one of his very worst!) is that it's not the Conservative Party who is the only or even the most important victim of BBC bias; indeed, if they were, it wouldn't be the end of the world. UKIP is no less a victim, though here the BBC's bullying largely takes the form of studiously ignoring them. The point is that there is a significant section of the British electorate - all those many millions of small-case conservatives - who are ignored, belittled, campained-against (etc) by the left-wing BBC. These people are, to add insult to injury, then forced to pay for the BBC. The BBC is also supposed to be legally impartial, but the rules of impartiality are broken day in and day out. That is why the Conservatives should act, why the Lib Dems should join them and Labour too. If they are all sincere democrats (ha!), if they believe that they govern (or would govern) in the interests of all rather than in their own interest (ha!), let them speak out for that large slice of public opinion currently sidelined by the biased BBC. Let them demand that the BBC behaves impartially (as far as is humanly possible) at all times - or else!!!