BARBARA AMIEL WRITES:

I HAVE OFTEN SEEN disagreements between the BBC and British governments, whether Labour or Conservative. But the battle going on now is quite different. It is a struggle for power between the two. Incredibly, it has all the hallmarks of an attempted coup d’état by the BBC. . . .

The serious story here is the spectacle of the BBC brass, lined up like a row of colonels in a banana republic, trying desperately to unseat a government which pursued a policy of which they disapprove. It is, to say the least, an unedifying spectacle.

Things are getting ugly. Actually, they already have.