Has the government reached a truce with the BBC?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Politics, Government, Daily News

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2021

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The new chairman of the BBC has been announced. It's not Charles Moore, or Paul Dacre, but a low-profile former banker called Richard Sharp. On the podcast, Cindy Yu talks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls about what Sharp's appointment reflects about the government's war on the BBC.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority.
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0:23.6	Hello and welcome to this special Saturday edition of Coffee House Shots. I'm Cindy Yu and I'm
0:28.6	joined by James Versaith and Katie Balls. Now James, this week you wrote a column for the Times
0:33.7	writing about the new chairman of the BBC. It's not Charles Moore, it's not Paul Dacre.
0:39.0	It's someone called Richard Sharp. Can you tell us about him? Yeah, Richard Sharp is a former
0:43.2	Goldman Sachs banker. He was on the Bank of England Financial Policy Committee. He's a former
0:49.0	chairman of the Royal Academy of Arts. He's very well connected in Tory circles. He was an
0:53.5	advisor to Boris Johnson when he was
0:55.5	Mayor of London. He was a donor to the party. And he was the Chancellor's boss when Rishi
1:00.1	Sunaat worked at Goldman Sachs. I think what is striking about this appointment is less than a
1:05.7	year ago, cabinet ministers were boycotting the today program and news night. Number 10 sources were
1:11.3	talking about how they were going to whack the license fee. There was a consultation on decriminalising
1:16.4	non-payment of it. We're now in a very different place a year on. And I think the Sharp appointment
1:22.5	kind of typifies that because it's very hard to see sending Richard Sharp to the BBC as chairman as any kind of
1:28.4	hostile act. Katie, is that period of hostility from Number 10 over now? Was there always a sort of
1:34.4	Dominic Cummings-Leaking kind of agenda? I think we're seeing a stylistic difference and I think the
1:39.4	question is how much does it actually affect the change? James makes the point that, you know,
1:43.5	it's now more about evolution and the aims haven't changed so much. There's still the change? James makes the point that, you know, it's now more about evolution,
1:44.8	and the aims haven't changed so much.
1:46.8	There's still the talk of reformed to BBC,
	...

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