Hugh Linehan: Whims of third-rate politicians risk vandalising UK’s cultural legacy

Even among the cast of unprepossessing characters who currently make up the government of our nearest neighbour, Nadine Dorries stands out. The UK’s secretary for digital, culture, media and sport’s unswerving loyalty – well beyond the point of absurdity – to Boris Johnson has given us some of the funniest viral videos of the past year. Her belief that “left-wing snowflakes are killing comedy” is slightly at odds with her threat following the Jimmy Carr controversy to bring in legislation to hold companies like Netflix to account for offensive jokes. But don’t expect coherence from Nadine Dorries.

This week a clip resurfaced of her appearance a few months ago before a House of Commons committee, where she lectured MPs about how seriously they should take their responsibilities towards the publicly-owned Channel 4. “Particularly when it is in receipt of taxpayers’ money,” the former I’m a Celebrity Get me Out of Here contestant gravely intoned, “it is our responsibility to evaluate whether taxpayers are receiving value for money and whether that model is sustainable in the future.”

Which might sound reasonable, were it not for the fact that, as her Conservative colleague Damien Green drily pointed out, Channel 4 does not in fact receive money from either the taxpayer or the licence fee. The 40-year-old TV channel is publicly-owned but is financed by commercial revenue. Cue red faces, awkward clearing of throats and yet another viral video.

The unembarrassable Dorries has pressed on, however, with her plan to save UK taxpayers money that they don’t actually spend, announcing this week that Channel 4 would be put up for sale in the biggest UK privatisation since the Royal Mail in 2013. She subsequently tweeted that public ownership was “holding Channel 4 back from competing against streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon”, adding: “A change of ownership will give Channel 4 the tools and freedom to flourish and thrive as a public service broadcaster long into the future.”

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It remains to be seen if resistance to the privatisation among some Tory MPs and in the House of Lords will be sufficient to stymie the plan

In reality, the move is clearly a bone thrown by Johnson to right-wingers in his own party, who see Channel 4, along with the BBC, as a nest of woke Remoaners requiring thorough fumigation. The not-very-popular prime minister needs to keep them firmly on board while he navigates the choppy waters of Partygate. So, not for the first time, Dorries has been deployed as Culture War secretary, taking the trusty sword of untruth to an institution created by that well-known radical lefty, Margaret Thatcher .

Should we in Ireland care? Channel 4 was set up in a very different era for purposes which may now seem redundant. As conceived by its founding chief executive, Jeremy Isaacs, it sought to provide greater diversity of viewpoints and representation in a broadcasting landscape dominated by the still-stuffy BBC and the resolutely commercial ITV. In its first decade, it acted as a springboard for a generation of dramatists, documentary-makers, comedians and journalists. Via its subsidiary FilmFour it injected badly-needed adrenalin into the ailing British film industry, and it led the way in funding what would become an increasingly significant independent television production sector. Many of its innovations were copied by its competitors in the UK and (much later) in Ireland, and went on to become industry standards. Plus we should not forget that, from Father Ted to Derry Girls, it’s been responsible for better Irish comedy than any other broadcaster in the world, including Ireland.

But there’s no denying that, as it drifted into middle age, the channel lost some of its edge. And the arrival first of cable and satellite, and then of the streamers, means its original mission requires revisiting. The same is true for all public service broadcasters, but that does not have to mean selling it off to Disney or Amazon. And questions remain whether any private bidder will be interested in taking on its statutory requirements in such areas as news and current affairs.

It also remains to be seen if resistance to the privatisation among some Tory MPs and in the House of Lords will be sufficient to stymie the plan. Meanwhile, though, the real hate object of Johnson’s government, the BBC, remains under threat, with Dorries tweeting in January that “this licence fee announcement will be the last. Time now to discuss and debate new ways of funding, supporting and selling great British content”.

Public service media is, of course, in all sorts of difficulties around the world and needs reinvention. It does seem extraordinary, though, and symptomatic of something deeply rotten in British politics, that the BBC, Channel 4 and the larger audiovisual sector, which by any objective standard have been one of the UK’s success stories of the last few decades, are now subject to the whims of third-rate, ill-informed politicians happy to indulge for partisan gain in wanton vandalism of their own country’s cultural inheritance.