There is no right-wing plot against the BBC. Its troubles are entirely of its own making.

 There is no Right-wing plot against the BBC. Its troubles are of its own making.

There is no sign of internal recognition that there is an urgent need for the Corporation to tackle its own failings

Telegraph View.

11 November 2025 8:22pm GMT

To listen to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, the problem with the BBC is straightforward: there is a sinister cabal of politicians obsessed with doing the organisation down. The broadcaster is “a light on the hill” for the British people; MPs who dare to assert that “institutional bias” could be an issue are attacking “a national institution that belongs to us all”.

Trump-BBC latest: Nandy claims BBC is a light on the hill Lisa Nandy has said she would not remove Sir Robbie Gibb from the BBC board because she does not have the legal ...

Some of the BBCs high profile champions have gone further and claim that shadowy forces on the Right, aided and abetted by their allies in the media, are attempting to pull off a coup against this bastion of impartial reporting.

A member of the BBC board, Sir Robbie Gibb, has been singled out for opprobrium. His sins are being a Tory and a Brexiteer. Sir Robbie served as Theresa May’s director of communications and was appointed to his current position by Boris Johnson. But Sir Robbie is no BBC ingenue. He enjoyed a long career with the broadcaster as a producer and editor of political programmes. Sir Robbie understands the Corporation.

Sir Ed, attacking Robbie Gibb doesn’t change the facts about BBC bias Claiming that there is a Right-wing cabal operating within the broadcaster’s board is merely a diversion

It is not Sir Robbie, or indeed the BBC’s critics, who created the current crisis. They did not edit Donald Trump’s speech, creating a deeply misleading impression. And the Panorama debacle stands far from alone. It is only one in a long list of serious misjudgments at the BBC

BBC to apologise for doctored Trump speech Chairman’s letter to MPs, expressing regret for misleading Panorama report, will heap further pressure on Tim Da...

How did the “LGBT desk” come to wield an effective veto over our national broadcaster’s coverage of trans issues? Why was nothing done to rein in BBC Arabic, which has been forced to correct two stories a week about the Gaza conflict since October 7? Why were notifications and alerts pushed to users of the BBC app subject to “selection bias”, eschewing the topic of illegal migration?

Now we have the evidence. The BBC knowingly helped spread Hamas lies and... The rot has spread far beyond the infamous Arabic service

Removing Sir Robbie from the board would do nothing to stop such problems from recurring. If anything, it would make matters worse as fewer people within the Corporation would see that there are very real issues. If Sir Robbie’s conservative politics are an issue, why not the pronounced Left-wing views of other members?

There is no sign of internal recognition that there is an urgent need for the Corporation to tackle its own failings. The Government does not seem to grasp the issue either. Instead, there is an apparently united front, and an understanding that the organisation must be shielded from criticism.

Perversely, it is precisely this resistance to criticism, and not the barbs of critics, that is most likely to damage the broadcaster in the long run. DT.