The soon-to-be ruling party in Britain has alighted on two motifs for its general election campaign: the red, white, and blue Union Jack and the word “change.”
If he is to win, Keir Starmer, the Labour Party leader, must pull off a voting shift greater even than that achieved by his mentor Tony Blair in 1997, the last time their party seized power. Yet such is the calamitous state of the Conservatives that after 14 years of misrule, a victory for Labour has been pretty much priced in for the election on July 4.
The only question is how great a majority it will achieve and whether that can produce a buffer large enough to keep it in power for a decade at least to tackle Britain’s many woes—from the economy to the health service, education, social care, and failed privatizations such as the postal service and water. Indeed, pretty much every area of public infrastructure needs repair.
There is another problem, one that is harder to enumerate but that also goes to the core of Britain’s unhappiness. Starmer often points to, if obliquely, the loss of the country’s status, its decline in esteem around the world and among the British themselves. There is little any government can, or should, do to address broad historical sweeps that produce such cultural malaise, such as postcolonial decline (which also affects France and similar countries).
What governments can do is chart a new course. Blair tried to modernize Britain’s image, with some success, at least until the Iraq War in 2003. Since then, it has retreated into the default position of desperately clinging to past glories, applying balm to cover more contemporary wounds. Starmer, for his part, will not talk about the central cause, Brexit; he refuses to countenance a formal return to European Union structures.
There are other causes of Britain’s malaise, however. The two most recognizable emblems of Britain’s soft power, the royal family and the BBC, are themselves beleaguered. There is little Starmer can do to address the former (though, within months of taking office, Blair persuaded Queen Elizabeth to show a little less stiff upper lip following the death of Princess Diana).
But there is much the prospective incumbent in Downing Street can do to help sort out the national broadcaster. The BBC’s future matters far beyond the island’s shores. It is central to the global battle for hearts and minds, an important tool for liberal democracy to counter the increasingly successful disinformation strategies of Russia and China.
In short, a reinvigorated BBC would also reinvigorate Britain’s reputation in the world. But to achieve that is easier said than done and will require considerable surgery.
Nearly 20 years ago, I wrote a piece reworking the famous acronym as “Broken, Beaten, Cowed.” Needless to say, the higher-ups at the network didn’t appreciate it. I stood by my argument then. I feel even more vindicated now.
Some of the problems are self-inflicted. The organization’s management has struggled to deal with a string of HR scandals, some extraordinarily sordid, over the years. These have damaged its reputation.
In the many decades I have known, and contributed to, the BBC, relations between staff and management have veered between suspicion and acrimony. Both sides seem to be equally responsible. The tens of thousands who work there have a deeply embedded civil service mentality. For many of these “lifers,” it has been their only employer.
Most of those now in charge of the organization have spent much of their careers outside it. That brings with it a difference in perspective but also a lack of loyalty to a venerable institution. They have pushed out a large proportion of the news and current affairs department and shut or pared back important foreign bureaus. Much expertise has gone with them. Many esteemed journalists have claimed they have been discriminated against and sometimes humiliated, while being encouraged to leave. Several employment tribunals are ongoing.
The bigger issues at stake are financial and political. The BBC has had to operate in an environment of deliberately stoked hostility. A series of Conservative culture ministers, almost one for each year in office, have either loathed or barely tolerated the publicly funded corporation. Its budget has been cut; its system of funding through a direct tax, the license fee, is now open to debate. Meanwhile, a Fox News-style culture warrior channel called GB News has been lavished with praise by the government.
The organization is facing a series of technological and demographic headwinds. Far fewer Gen Zers watch and listen to BBC output than older generations (a problem that other legacy media organizations grapple with). In a bid to keep up with the times, the BBC has changed the nature of much of its content. Serious detailed documentaries take second place to competing with TikTok.
The evening current affairs program Newsnight, on air since 1980, is now a low-cost, low-grade chat show. The morning radio program, called Today, which used to be an appointment to listen, has replaced much of its (more expensive) international coverage with round-Britain lifestyle segments.
The most visible area of withering is in the BBC’s global output. In a note to staff in April announcing her departure after only three years as director of the World Service, Liliane Landor expressed deep concern about the “operational capability” of the service, which broadcasts in 42 languages. “With media freedom under threat, the World Service is a force for good and the BBC needs to look after it,” Landor said in a statement.
The BBC announced in September 2022 that nearly 400 jobs in its global arm would be lost to save 28.5 million pounds (about $35.6 million). Several languages have been dropped, including Arabic, with Persian to follow. In 2021, the BBC spent 290 million pounds ($368 million) on the service, with the government, via the Foreign Office, committing to invest a further 94 million pounds ($120 million) a year until next March. After this, funding is up for grabs.
BBC Director General Tim Davie, while pushing through the cuts, has urged the government to provide more of the funding. “We cannot keep asking U.K. license fee payers to invest in it when we face cuts to U.K. services,” he said. “We will need to discuss a long-term funding solution … that comes from central government budgets.”
Back in 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 fake news battle, the government gave the BBC an extra pot of money to fight disinformation coming from Russia, China, and elsewhere. The idea was to help expand a new unit verifying information and tackling bots. The sum, 8 million pounds ($11 million), while not unwelcome, was a drop in the ocean and does not compensate for the contraction of its traditional journalism.
The organization’s most recent annual report revealed that the weekly reach of the World Service had declined 12 percent year-on-year to 318 million people. Shortly after celebrating its centenary, the BBC is losing global influence at a time when it is most needed, with democracy in so much peril in so many parts of the world.
Starmer and his ministers will not want to get involved in the BBC’s day-to-day problems. Indeed, they will be keen, after a decade of interference by the Conservatives, to give it more operational independence.
Yet if there is one area where the government should be active, it is in preserving and extending the BBC’s role in providing impartial and reliable news and analysis to as many people as possible around the world. That will cost money – and Labour has made clear it will not spend what it can’t afford. Much of it could be found by abolishing the comical ‘GREAT’ campaign of British flag-waving that costs the taxpayer 60 million pounds per year. The government will have to do a new cost-sharing deal with the BBC and even if a little more has to be found, it is surely a price worth paying to give the UK an influence in the world it has steadily lost.
Whatever the costs, the long-term cost of watching as the organization’s international output continues to wither will be greater still.
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