Battle for the BBC

With BBC in the crosshairs of Boris Johnson’s government, we look at network’s century of struggle with British state.

Within weeks of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s sweeping election victory last December, his aides were warning of a plan to “whack” the UK’s public broadcaster. The government would, they said, abolish the BBC’s main source of income, the TV licence. Coming off the back of a decade of budget cuts, supporters of the BBC fear that, if Johnson gets his way, it could soon be disfigured beyond recognition.