The advertisement for the job of BBC chair for which Richard Sharp successfully applied in November 2020, and from which he resigned on Friday, stipulated that candidates declare any “real or perceived conflict of interest”. Care should be taken over issues that could “be misconstrued, cause embarrassment, or cause public confidence in the appointment to be jeopardised”.
One such issue, in Mr Sharp’s case, was helping facilitate guarantees for a personal loan of up to £800,000 from a Canadian financier to Boris Johnson, then prime minister. When asked by the advisory assessment panel that gave the green light for his appointment about perceived conflicts of interest, Mr Sharp said everything had been properly declared. It had not. A report into the process, published on Friday, found that omission to be an unambiguous breach of the rules.
The report does not speculate about Mr Sharp’s motives when getting involved in the prime minister’s personal finances. Such speculation is not necessary to judge whether the threshold of action likely to compromise the perceived independence of the system was crossed. Plainly it was.
Even without Mr Sharp in the picture, the fact of a prime minister so strapped for cash that he took personal loans of undisclosed extent and origin is evidence of scandalous dysfunction. For a prospective chair of the national broadcaster to get involved without alarm bells ringing suggests a Downing Street regime with no care for the norms and protocols of good democratic governance.
Mr Johnson lacked the ethical and managerial competencies required of a prime minister. He believed that he was destined for the job and entitled by destiny to act without constraint. Such a man has no respect for the independence of the BBC and every reason to treat it as an extension of his personal domain, with his preferred candidate appointed as its chair. Mr Sharp’s departure must be a turning point in the corporation’s relations with government. It is publicly funded, not controlled by the state. The distinction needs to be better respected by ministers and more robustly defended by senior BBC management.
It is of some concern that while Tory ministers have been bashing Auntie, this distracts from more pressing needs such as planning for a future where radio and television are only accessed through the internet. Labour’s Lucy Powell has the right idea – setting up an expert panel to secure the BBC’s future funding as well as its independence and impartiality.
In government there has been no serious attempt at a reckoning with the noxious Johnson legacy; nothing approximating contrition for the debasement of public life over which he presided, with the current prime minister serving as his accomplice. Rishi Sunak is resented by some Tories for his role in Mr Johnson’s defenestration. On taking office he styled himself as an antidote to his predecessor’s chaotic rule. The repudiation is superficial. As time goes on, and Mr Sunak’s own affairs come under scrutiny – most recently regarding non-disclosure of potential conflicts of interest connected to his wife’s shareholdings – the break from the past he promised blurs into continuity.
Mr Sharp’s resignation was overdue. The problem with his appointment was self-evident the moment his involvement in back-channel conversations about the prime minister’s personal finances became public. The enforcement of some accountability counts as progress, but there is a long way still to go before the full scale of damage done by Mr Johnson’s rule to the reputation and conduct of politics is acknowledged. That recognition, unlikely under a Conservative government, is a precondition for the rehabilitation of standards in public life.
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