Who would want an impossible job?

Davie's successor must face political storm and claims of enemy within

- By Michael Savage

As BBC senior editors arrived at its New Broadcasting A House headquarters in London on Monday, the most pressing question was what had convinced Tim Davie, the corporation's director general, to quit.

Like any good BBC drama, it was a plot twist no one had seen coming.

As they assessed the brutal pressures that had finally proved too much for Davie, a second question was soon being aired. Was running the BBC now simply an impossible job? "That's the conversation going round this newsroom," said a BBC insider. "That's one of the sad things. The relentless nature of these roles. They are big jobs but... god." Davie had been through a series of rows since the start of the year, from the social media posts of the corporation's former star sports presenter Gary Lineker to several issues relating to its Israel and Gaza coverage. As recently as last week, however, he seemed to be thinking about the future as he engaged in a staff debate about the impact of AI.

Yet to the BBC lieutenants whose ranks would once have produced Davie's successor, the crisis of the past week has exposed the gaping issues that make the job so perilous. The Guardian has talked to sources across the BBC about the events that unfolded since allegations of systemic liberal bias were made in a memo by a former external adviser, leaked to the Daily Telegraph and dissected over several days last week.

Opinions differ about the severity of the issues laid out by the PR executive Michael Prescott, who was once political editor of Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times. Most point to the editing of a Trump speech in which the corporation's Panorama programme spliced together two parts of the president's address on the day of the Capitol riots, as the most serious error.

The BBC has apologised personally to the president following his threat to sue.

The crisis has also brought to the fore longrunning concerns about internal political pressure.