Donald Trump’s $1bn lawsuit won’t finish the BBC off – but Nigel Farage might

As the US president contemplates suing the corporation over ‘Panorama’, the Reform UK leader is already dancing on its grave. Both men share an ideological project that would thrive on the broadcaster’s demise, says Sean O’Grady

We should fear for the future of the BBC. Within a few years, the corporation will probably cease to exist, at least as we know it today – and regardless of whether or not Donald Trump now decides to sue over errors in its January 6 documentary.

The present row about the way Panorama edited a clip of the US president’s notorious speech on January 6 2021 is actually now almost irrelevant to the BBC’s battle for survival. Even if the final cut had been signed off by Stephen Miller, the bullet-headed White House PR brute, the mission on the right to put the BBC to death would still proceed unabated. There would be some other scandal – something about Gaza, asylum hotels, trans rights, climate science – along shortly.

There will always be some grievance to exploit, real or manufactured. No apology issued by the BBC’s chair, Dr Samir Shah, no matter how abject, will ever be adequate; no quantum of resignations will suffice; and no rebuttals will be entertained. It doesn’t matter how often Nigel Farage, Zia Yusuf and Richard Tice appear on the BBC, or how many content-free Reform “policy launches” are carried live and uninterrupted on the BBC News channel, they will still claim the BBC is biased.

They will not be satisfied until it is gone. It’s visceral. Farage, in his latest publicity event, says it’s “institutionally biased” and is already metaphorically dancing on its grave. I know this because I’ve just seen him say and do it – on the BBC News channel.

The right-wing, illiberal metropolitan elite – an underreported conspiracy – have long since made their minds up that they’d be better off without a source of independent facts and news, and their media interests as well as their ideological agenda would also profit from the loss of BBC competition, especially online.

It’s been true for decades. A century ago, a furious Winston Churchill told the revered Lord Reith that the BBC’s reporting of the 1926 general strike was biased, and “you have no right to be impartial between the fire and the fire brigade”.

So there’s always been scraps, and bloody ones, and colossal blunders. But the very existence of the BBC was never seriously in doubt. Now it is. It could close down for good.

Going dark: ‘A right-wing, illiberal metropolitan elite – an underreported conspiracy – have long since made their minds up that they’d be better off without a source of independent facts and news’ (AFP/Getty)

Never previously has a British political party been prepared to advocate killing off the BBC – but now we have Farage leading one that has a realistic chance of winning power at the next general election, and doing just that. The undisguised malice towards the BBC is palpable. It feels like an act of spite for the way the BBC tried to report the EU referendum a decade ago, and the grim consequences of Brexit since.

Farage, a vengeful man, will never forgive them for that, and his litany of complaints has widened to DEI and the rest. He is not alone in his vindictive intent, and it is not so long ago that Boris Johnson appointed Nadine Dorries as culture secretary. She promised the BBC charter, up for renewal in 2027, “will be the last”.

Be in no doubt. Under a Reform UK government led by Farage or, quite conceivably, a Tory one led by the likes of Kemi Badenoch, the whole lot would go. No more Celebrity Traitors, no more Gavin and Stacey, no more landmark wildlife documentaries, no more recherché classical music on Radio 3, no more EastEnders cliffhangers, no more Radio Kent to hold the Reform council to account, BBC Scotland, the World Service, This Country, Strictly, News Channel, CBeebies, Wallace and Gromit, the comprehensive website, correspondents all over the world, Newsnight, Panorama, Question Time or Match of the Day, BBC Bitesize, The Bodyguard, Line of Duty, Blue Peter or Doctor Who.

As someone who worked at the BBC as a junior staffer many years ago, including with some of the more prominent personalities in the news at the moment, all I can say is that BBC journalists are morbidly afraid of getting things wrong, and follow the producer guidelines like holy writ. It is very important to note that the fatal edition of Panorama in question was made by an independent production company, October Films (just as the controversial film about a child’s life in Gaza was).

Yet the BBC would never subcontract its news output, and it should never do the same with current affairs documentaries. Every editor, producer, researcher and crew member has to be imbued with the BBC’s values, and that’s far too difficult to achieve without direct control.

All it would take to scrap the BBC is a Reform or Conservative majority in the Commons, a gradual defunding of the annual licence and a rundown of the television, radio and web services. Ideally, from Farage’s point of view, a way would be found to cancel the royal charter to be granted in 2027, but the BBC would close down for good in any case.

It would be a national disaster. There are plenty of things that are “broken” about Britain, but the BBC isn’t one of them.

In fact, it is a highly professional centre of excellence. It works. It is one of our very few globally recognised and respected brands. It makes a lot of money for the country and projects considerable soft power. It is trusted, no matter what Farage says. Its critics, such as GB News (or “Reform TV” as it should be called), are ludicrously partial and unbalanced. Trump, whose relationship with reality is strained, is threatening to sue it out of existence.

Yet the BBC is about to be chucked away because Farage, Boris Johnson and the Daily Telegraph resent it. Trump could threaten to sue it out of existence. We might in future have a BBC subscription service, much shrunken and, probably unsustainably, poorly funded, creaking to its grave. When the BBC goes, we’d still have other news organisations and sports, plus entertainment companies who’ll be making content, just as we do now. But none will ever be able to emulate the BBC’s quality, the breadth and depth of its output and its “Britishness”. Few will be free to air.

The BBC has been part of the warp and weft of our national life, and infused its culture and language. We’re able to identify people we meet as “Del Boy”, “Alan Partridge” or “David Brent” types, or having “Alf Garnett attitudes”. We still joke about things being of “all of the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”. Government policies can still descend into “omnishambles”. That all of that precious heritage and all of that vast potential should be jettisoned so that Trump and his friends in the UK can have an easier ride is just fantastically ridiculous – Pythonesque, you might say, or like something out of The Thick of It.

It’s unspeakably sad, it’s mad, and somehow it has got to be stopped.