NADINE Dorries has never been one to inspire confidence in her ability to grasp the details.
The Culture Secretary made headlines for all the wrong reasons after she begun floating plans for the privatisation of Channel 4.
Dorries said she would argue that the future of the broadcaster shouldn’t be scrutinised “just because it’s in receipt of public money”.
You might expect the person literally in charge of media for the Tory government to know that Channel 4 is not in receipt of public money. You might.
Proving that her lack of knowledge on the topic of broadcasting in the UK is boundless, Dorries has made another pretty similar error.
Speaking to LBC on Thursday, the top Tory pointed to how well Channel 5 has done since “they were privatised a small number of years ago, three years ago, five years ago maybe”.
The reason Dorries struggled to remember exactly how many years ago Channel 5 was privatised may have something to do with the fact it never happened.
As a quick Google would have told her, Channel 5 was launched as a private broadcaster in 1997 and has never been publicly owned.
In making the case for selling Channel 4, Nadine Dorries points to the success of Channel 5's privatisation, not once, but twice. Channel 5 has never been owned by the government. pic.twitter.com/Ru927I9dO7
— Jake Kanter (@Jake_Kanter) April 28, 2022
It was bought from its owner Richard Desmond by American firm Paramount Global in 2014, but that can’t have been what she meant, can it?
Either way, Dorries’s mistake wasn’t a one-off. She doubled down on her statement, a wry look suggesting she thought she was making a fine point.
“I call Channel 5 the levelling-up broadcaster,” she said to absolutely no applause.
SNP MP John Nicolson said Dorres displayed an “extraordinary level of ignorance for a Cabinet minister speaking about her own brief”.
The only question left to ask is: why are any of us surprised?
