Channel 4 privatisation: Nadine Dorries in online spat with Kirstie Allsopp

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Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has clashed with TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp after the gung-ho Tory Cabinet minister blasted opponents of the Government’s proposed privatisation of Channel 4 as a ‘Leftie luvvie lynch mob’.

The bruising Twitter spat broke out after Boris Johnson’s arguably most loyal Cabinet ally warned that the ‘woke’ broadcaster, which has been publicly owned since 1982 and is funded by advertising, would be sold off. 

Miss Dorries wrote in The Mail on Sunday that Margaret Thatcher had ultimately wanted C4 to be ‘free from the constraints of the State’ and described opposition to the move as ‘lazy’ and ‘overwrought’. 

The Government has been consulting on plans to privatise C4, with sources insisting that ministers believe that public ownership of the broadcaster is ‘holding it back’ from competing with streaming giants such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+. 

But Labour and C4 stars have accused the Johnson government of deciding to sell the broadcaster for £1billion because of a ‘petty vendetta’ against its Left-wing news bulletins and personal attacks on the Prime Minister. 

Critics claimed Miss Dorries’ pledge to take it out of public ownership is ‘payback’ for ‘biased coverage’, including of Brexit and climate change, with one hysterical MP branding it ‘Fascism’. 

Miss Allsopp, who presents property show Location, Location, Location on C4, responded on Twitter by questioning whether it was ‘really ministerial’ to describe those contesting privatisation as a ‘lynch mob’ while ‘at the same time complaining about having been accused of Fascism’.

Sharing an article by NPR about the US Senate passing an anti-lynching Bill, she added: ‘This piece might make you think twice about using the term.’

Labour has called the decision ‘cultural vandalism’ – but some viewers have pondered whether a new owner might improve on shows such as Naked Attraction – an uncensored nude dating show repeatedly branded the ‘worst programme ever shown on TV’.

Ministers deny they are pursuing any vendetta, with the Culture Secretary pushing ahead with plans to sell C4 in what will be the biggest disposal of a state-owned asset since Royal Mail in 2013.

Miss Allsopp responded to the Government’s announcement by tweeting that ‘no true Conservative would sell Channel 4’ and that ‘Lady T will be spinning in her grave’.

Replying to her posts on Sunday night, Miss Dorries suggested Thatcher’s memoirs, The Downing Street Years, proved she intended C4 to be sold. 

She also claimed that the broadcaster could not be preserved in its current state because of ‘decreasing advertising revenue and decreasing investment in new content’.

The Culture Secretary added: ‘There is of course the bonus a sale will bring to the entire sector which is that the proceeds of sale will be invested back into people from all backgrounds, especially those from left-behind communities because talent is everywhere, not just in the SE.

‘We will invest in skills in order to benefit from incoming demand due to our booming film and TV sector due to the favourable tax benefit/relief and funding this gov has put in place to encourage film industry to regard Britain as its home.

‘I also love C4, especially Location Location, but as I say in my article, it’s time to look to the future. The channel’s salad days are in the past. 

‘Being owned by the Gov is restrictive. Time for C4 to fly the nest towards a very exciting future.’   

Writing in The Mail on Sunday, Miss Dorries said: ‘Last week I made the decision that it is time to unleash the broadcaster’s full potential and open Channel 4 up to private ownership and investment while protecting its crucial public service broadcasting remit.

‘Sadly, the reaction was as predictable as it was inflammatory.

‘Few opponents want to engage with the issue of guaranteeing Channel 4’s long-term future. They’re happier sneering, accusing me of not being “smart enough” to understand Channel 4 or descending into full-on abusive hysteria. One Labour MP claimed a Channel 4 sale would be “the seedbed of Fascism”.

‘I shouldn’t be surprised. This streak has always existed in and around Channel 4.

‘Its former head of news, Dorothy Byrne, who has been defending the station, is the same person who in a lecture compared our Prime Minister to Vladimir Putin.

‘But let’s dump the lazy, overwrought and ill-informed rhetoric from the Leftie luvvie lynch mob and take a cool look at the facts.’

Plans for the sale will reportedly be set out in a White Paper later this month and will be included in a new Media Bill for next spring.

A string of Tory MPs and peers, including Sir Peter Bottomley, former Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee Julian Knight, and former cabinet ministers Damian Green and Jeremy Hunt have publicly questioned the plans.

Sir Peter, who represents Worthing West, said he opposes the sale ‘because I am a Conservative’.

US TV giants Paramount and Discovery are said to be vying with ITV and Sky to buy Channel 4 for £1billion and take it out of public ownership amid years of rows over its treatment of the Conservatives.

Its star presenter Jon Snow, who retired last year after 32 years, was accused of chanting ‘f**k the Tories’ at Glastonbury while Channel 4 News has been criticised for years over its coverage, most recently of Brexit and climate change. 

When Mr Johnson secured a 80-seat majority in 2019, boos rang out in the studio during C4’s live news coverage of the general election hosted by Krishnan Guru-Murthy.

Shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell said today that the decision was a ‘petty little vendetta against Channel 4’ that will ‘serve no good for the British public’, adding: ‘It doesn’t make any sense. I can’t find many people are in favour of it’.

Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former spin doctor, tweeted: ‘The Channel 4 move is right out of the Orban playbook and timed to make it blatant. Part of their purpose is to wind up ‘liberals’.

Disgraced Labour MP Claudia Webbe, now an independent, tweeted: ‘This is not freedom or independence – its the seedbed of Fascism. Tory privatisation of Channel 4 is revenge for all the good journalism they did’.

Some Tories are also opposed. Former minister Damian Green said: ‘The sale of Channel 4 is politicians and civil servants thinking they know more about how to run a business than the people who run it. Very unConservative. Mrs Thatcher, who created it, never made that mistake’.

Ruth Davidson tweeted: ‘Channel 4 is publicly owned, not publicly funded. It doesn’t cost the tax payer a penny. It also, by charter, commissions content but doesn’t make/own its own. It’s one of the reasons we have such a thriving indy sector in places like Glasgow. This is the opposite of levelling up’.

Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, who is tipped to be a future party leadership candidate, said he was ‘pretty doubtful’ that selling Channel 4 would be a good move. 

He said: ‘Given the success Channel 4 has had in promoting independent production around the UK, I remain to be convinced this is going to achieve the aim the government has set out’.

‘I’m not in favour of it because as it stands, Channel 4 provides competition to the BBC on what’s called public service broadcasting, the kinds of programmes that are not commercially viable — and it’d be a shame to lose that,’ Jeremy Hunt said.

Channel 4 was launched in 1982 by Margaret Thatcher to provide a not-for-profit fourth television service for Britain, alongside BBC1, BBC2 and ITV.

It has been funded by advertising and sponsorship deals since the outset, with revenues of around £1billion, boosted recently by a surge in traffic to its All 4 streaming platform where the biggest watched shows are The Great British Bake Off, Gogglebox, SAS: Who Dares Wins as well as its archive of shows including Father Ted, The Inbetweeners, Friday Night Dinners and Peep Show. The shows are free to watch but £3.99 per month if you want to remove adverts.

But the broadcaster has also come under repeated attacks from Conservatives who complain that some of its output is biased against the Tories. One MP said despite being home to many much-loved shows, it ‘sealed its own fate’ with years of ‘one-sided’ Left-leaning news shows. 

Speaking to Times Radio last Tuesday, Dorothy Byrne, former head of news and current affairs at C4, insisted that the broadcaster is not Left-wing, adding: ‘I think it’s being privatised to throw a bit of red meat to Tory supporters of a very Right-wing nature at a time that the Government is in trouble.

‘I think the political agenda is to show that the Government is doing something radically Right-wing to please people. It’s the same agenda as attacking the licence fee. 

‘It’s that knee-jerk thing, privatise thing, that’s a good thing to do.’ 

The Thick Of It creator Armando Iannucci tweeted: ‘They asked for “a debate”; 90% of submissions in that debate said it was a bad idea. But still they go ahead. Why do they want to make the UK’s great TV industry worse? Why? It makes no business, economic or even patriotic sense.’ 

The writer of It’s A Sin, Russell T Davies, has previously said privatising Channel 4 would be a ‘great crime’ that would result in programmes like his hit series not being made.

Channel 4 News, presented by Jon Snow until last Christmas, has repeatedly been branded left-wing and accused of unfairly trashing the Conservatives, reportedly sparking complaints from its own journalists about the programme’s ‘anti-Tory bias’.

In 2017 it was even claimed that Mr Snow joined in a chant of ‘F*** The Tories’ while attending the Glastonbury festival and in 2019 there was a grovelling apology after the veteran presenter said he had ‘never seen so many white people in one place’ while reporting on a pro-Brexit rally.

And after an attack on two gay women on a London bus, a reporter was accused of ‘coaxing’ the couple into blaming Mr Johnson for the homophobic crime and saying that he was ‘not fit to lead the UK’.

In 2019 Ofcom rejected a Conservative complaint over Channel 4’s use of an ice sculpture to stand in for the PM during a debate on climate change, after a subtitler mistakenly reported him saying ‘people of colour’ when he said ‘people of talent’ at a rally.

NADINE DORRIES: Predictably, the Leftie lynch mob refuses to accept what is best for British TV

By NADINE DORRIES for THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

Tories are supposed to loathe Channel 4 . And it doesn’t always help itself with its news anchor shouting ‘f*** the Tories’, or broadcasting an alternative Queen’s speech by Iranian dictator Ahmadinejad or a deep fake of Her Majesty.

Despite this, and for the metropolitan elite who say I’m out to destroy the broadcaster, I’d like to say that I really like Channel 4.

I’ve spent evenings curled up on the sofa in front of Bake Off, First Dates or Jenny and Lee bickering on Gogglebox. My kids grew up on TFI Friday, Frasier, Friends and Crystal Maze.

Channel 4 plays a unique and important cultural role in British life. 

Since it was established by that radical Leftist Margaret Thatcher in 1982, it has more than fulfilled her aim of stimulating the independent production sector – which has exploded from a £500 million industry in 1995 to £3 billion in 2019.

However, as her memoirs reveal, job done, Mrs Thatcher concluded in 1988 that Channel 4 should be sold.

Broadcasting is now a totally different and digital world. Streaming giants have exploded on to the scene, with juggernauts such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ upending the old order. 

Technology has transformed the way we consume content. Our viewing habits are no longer confined to TV channels but have morphed into a world where we choose what we want to watch, and where and when we want to watch it.

To suggest that Channel 4 isn’t already competing with new platforms for audience share, talent, ideas and skilled employees is wilfully delusional.

Netflix spent £779 million on UK original productions in 2020 – more than twice as much as Channel 4.

In fact, Channel 4 decreased the amount it spent on new content by £158 million at a time when it should be investing in new programmes, technology and skills.

The channel is niche and State-owned, a restrictive incongruity in itself. 

And because of the way Channel 4 is owned, it cannot build a back catalogue to export, or have an in-house studio to create and sell content. Instead it relies almost entirely on advertising, which is increasingly migrating online.

It would be irresponsible for any government to sit back and allow the status quo to continue. 

So last week I made the decision that it is time to unleash the broadcaster’s full potential and open Channel 4 up to private ownership and investment while protecting its crucial public service broadcasting remit.

Sadly, the reaction was as predictable as it was inflammatory.

Few opponents want to engage with the issue of guaranteeing Channel 4’s long-term future. 

They’re happier sneering, accusing me of not being ‘smart enough’ to understand Channel 4 or descending into full-on abusive hysteria. 

One Labour MP claimed a Channel 4 sale would be ‘the seedbed of fascism’.

I shouldn’t be surprised. This streak has always existed in and around Channel 4.

Its former head of news, Dorothy Byrne, who has been defending the station, is the same person who in a lecture compared our Prime Minister to Vladimir Putin.

But let’s dump the lazy, overwrought and ill-informed rhetoric from the Leftie luvvie lynch mob and take a cool look at the facts.

Our independent production companies are flourishing, with only seven per cent of the industry’s revenue coming from Channel 4. We made more films in the fourth quarter of 2021 than Hollywood, and dozens of new studios are due to open.

Channel 4 is a distinct cultural asset which has created some of the best programmes we have ever been lucky enough to watch. But its salad days are in the past.

It is time to look to a grown-up future against the backdrop of a digital future. We believe we can sell Channel 4 to a buyer who will fund emerging talent, independent and impartial news, and invest in every corner of the UK.

Creative talent can be found everywhere, hidden in plain sight in all backgrounds and corners of this country. 

The Government intervened to move Channel 4 to Leeds, despite much opposition within the broadcaster, and there is no reason for a sale not to accelerate that process, moving more of the broadcaster north.

Post-sale, I want to reinvest the proceeds into levelling up the creative sector, training a skilled workforce to fill the jobs in our booming film and TV studios. 

To develop creative skills in left-behind parts of the country. Channel 4’s sale won’t just benefit the broadcaster. It will deliver a creative dividend for all.

That is a truly Conservative and Thatcherite vision for Channel 4. One where we protect the public service elements of broadcasting, ensure its sustainability and invest in creative skills, opening up the sector to a much broader section of society.

It is fundamentally Conservative to want Channel 4 to grow so it can invest in better technology, content and people and have an even bigger impact on our creative economy than it already has.

That’s what I want to get on with – and the overblown reaction from the same people who snobbishly decried my appointment the moment I walked through my department’s doors won’t stop me.

In 1988, Margaret Thatcher was right. She could see that Channel 4 would only ever reach its full potential when it was free from the constraints of the State – and that is the vision and the outcome we will deliver.