Feedback: 2015 Election

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It seems rather discourteous of us to leave you before the end of the election campaign, when several listeners are only just managing to restrain themselves from smashing their radios with frustration about some of the election coverage, particularly bad tempered interviews.

By the time we return I assume a government of sorts will have been formed, either a coalition or a minority one with pledges of support from smaller parties. One of the issues which will surface early will be the future of the BBC and the licence fee.

It is pretty clear that the latter will be frozen at best and that there will be a substantial public debate about what services should be cut. The Corporation and the incoming Government will likely be trying to offload the responsibility on each other for what should be chopped.  

Once more the streets around Broadcasting House in London may be filled with polite but angry listeners whose favourite networks have been threatened with extinction.

Fortunately for the Corporation there have been wise heads around to stop prejudices turning into bad broadcasting policy. Just as William Whitelaw and Douglas Hurd were able to frustrate Mrs Thatcher’s wilder ideas in this area, so Labour’s Roy Jenkins was able to see off the desire of Tony Benn and others to exert closer political control on the broadcasters.

In the 1974 election I saw the strained relations at close hand.

I was the young BBC TV producer allocated to cover Harold Wilson’s result at his Huyton constituency. Everyone thought that, while he would retain his seat, Labour would lose nationally and that its leader would resign soon afterwards. Instead Mr Wilson soon found himself back in Downing St after the outgoing PM Edward Heath had failed to fashion a coalition with the Liberals.

Wilson believed that the BBC’s coverage had been biased against him so when it came to who got the first postelection interview we didn’t get it, ITV did.

This was acutely frustrating for my ambitious younger self since my reporter Michael Charlton and I had put in a massive effort to charm Marcia Falkender and the Wilson entourage, while the legendary ITV newscaster and interviewer Reggie Bosanquet had stayed put, shut away in his Bentley. At the appropriate moment he was summoned. Reggie adjusted his toupee, drank a glass of water, popped a mint into his mouth, and then set off to ask a small number of far from probing questions.

In that close election, tempers did become a little frayed, so we were keen to find out whether the same was happening with this year’s extremely tight election.

Who better to ask than the BBC chief political adviser Ric Bailey whose mobile starts ringing shortly after 6 am and is still reverberating after midnight?

We may be off the air until 19 June but we will still be reading all the letters and emails you send us, and listening to your phone calls. Do tell us what you want us to look into for the next series.

Until then, goodbye.

Roger Bolton.

Roger Bolton is the presenter of Feedback