SHARED OPINION

Watch your back, Mr Dyke: the PM has to keep his middle-class Tory constituency happy

FRANK JOHNSON

By the time this appears, Mr Blair may already have done it, but at the time of writing he has not. That is, let down Mr Dyke, his former financial benefactor, now BBC director-general. Any minute soon we can expect the Prime Minister to tell some interviewer that he regrets the BBC's deci- sion not to broadcast live the Queen Moth- er's 100th birthday parade.

We can all imagine Mr Blair on The Frost Programme or wherever. Our Prime Minis- ter is an uncertain historian, but he has the gift of being able to grasp the essentials, to identify with whatever Middle England thinks at any given moment.

Sir David: 'Tony, can we talk about the Queen Mum?'

Prime Minister: 'There's no one I'd rather talk about, David. She's one feisty lady. She helped see our country through the first world war. Her and Pitt the Younger. Our senior citizens can never for- get the way a Zeppelin fell on her in the Buckingham Palace garden, and she said that now she could look the West End in the face. The whole country is looking for- ward to her parade. Right now, I want to be the first to say, "God bless you, ma'am".'

Sir David: 'So you're critical of Greg Dyke's decision not to screen the parade live?'

Prime Minister: 'I didn't say that. I think Greg's been badly let down by the BBC.'

Sir David: 'But he runs the BBC.'

Prime Minister: 'Exactly. The DG is always the last to know. It's like being prime minister. Greg's a national treasure. He saw us through the Kosovo war. If there's anyone who can see us through this new crisis, it's Greg.'

The following day's papers will be full of: `Blair Warns Dyke Over That Parade'. Mr Dyke will summon his public relations peo- ple, a tightly-knit group comprising just 150 BBC employees. It will then be announced that the Corporation intended to show the parade all along, and it was Tory press hys- teria that said otherwise. Downing Street will also spin into action. The next lot of papers will announce: 'Tony Saves Queen Mum's Big Day'. The only loss will be Mr Dyke's face.

Trying to run a decently Blairite BBC is a tricky business. It is hard to get it right. In deciding not to show the parade, Mr Dyke and his team probably thought that Blairite was what they were being: no truck with any- thing 100 years old — not in keeping with the young country that we have been since May 1997. But Blairism is what Mr Blair says it is at any given moment. At most given moments, these days, Mr Blair is in trouble with the tabloids. The trouble is always caused by someone doing something which they thought was Blairite. But Mr Blair's flatterers forget that Mr Blair is not much of a Blairite. He won office only by persuading enough middle-class, indeed Tory, voters that he would do nothing radical.

His trouble is that his original supporters, such as people working in the higher media, especially television, want radical things done. They take seriously his occa- sional rhetoric about devolution, a young country, the need to be closer to 'Europe', higher public spending on health and edu- cation, etc. He does not. If he did, the for- mer Tory middle class would not vote for him again. There are already signs that they will not do so again in such numbers at the next general election. In order to win office, Mr Blair had to suppress his party. In order to keep office, he knows he must suppress his supporters such as Mr Dyke.

Let us hope that Mr Hague, if he ever becomes prime minister, or whichever Con- servative becomes the next Conservative in Downing Street, is equally hard-headed. Not that we could expect the Conservatives ever to fill the BBC with right-wing executives and correspondents. People who rise in tele- vision can never be right-inclined. Many of us would regret it if they were. One of life's minor pleasures for us Tories is denouncing the BBC for its assumption that manifestly liberal partisans are merely objective.

Still, it would be fun to see a BBC, just for a trial period, which was right-wing. Then it would be the turn of the liberal press to foam against its bias. Editorials would appear along the lines of: 'The BBC's decision not to broadcast live the final of the National Breast-Feeding Cham- pionship is yet another example of how out of touch it is with the feelings of the British people. The final, played amid the vast green expanse of the House of Commons chamber, is a national institution. Yet the right-wing Hague-ite hacks and placemen who run the BBC have no conception of the history of this country that began in May 1997 — that glorious month when Britain stood alone against the might of John Major.

`It is quite on a par with the BBC's cruel decision not to show Mo Mowlam's 60th birthday parade. Ms Mowlarn has a unique place in the hearts of all Islington, reaching out to Camden, and beyond to Chalk Farm. She saw us through her war with Mandel- son. Well, we are not afraid to say to her on behalf of the North London people: 'God bless you, person!'

Last week I mentioned that the week in question was one of the most momentous in our history — the week in which Churchill became war leader — but that only the Daily Telegraph among national papers seemed to have noticed. It was also a momentous week in French history: the day Churchill became prime minister was the day Germany attacked France and the Low Countries. The French press, so far as I could see, was even more subdued than the British. I could find no pieces about the anniversary in Le Monde, Le Figaro or the French weeklies. There is still time. The tenth of July is the 60th anniversary of the Third Republic's ceding power to Petain, and the beginning of collaboration. It will be interesting to see how the event is commemorated.

Not that we should subscribe to the view that the French ignore this darkest time in their history. That they do is a British myth. For at least 20 years, the literature on collaboration in French has grown enormously. Almost every conceivable aspect of collaboration now has a book about it, from the role of the intellectuals to that of the theatre.

I hope to return to this subject. For the moment I prefer to remember (quoting from memory) a passage in To Lose a Battle, Mr Alistair Home's masterpiece on the fall of France: during the phoney war preceding the invasion, the German propaganda experts shout (in French) over loudspeakers to the opposing lines: 'Army of the North. • While you're on duty, behind your lines iv this region, the British tonunies are sleeplq with your wives, and raping your daughters. Mr Home's masterly translation of the French reply is: 'We don't give a bugger' We're from the South.'