THE SECRECY surrounding the Government’s search for a new BBC chairman was breached last week. A bomb scare interrupted the private interviews being conducted by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, forcing David Dimbleby on to the street and into the view of waiting journalists, confirming his hitherto confidential candidature. The confusion engendered by the security alert also led to the “outing” of Michael Grade as another candidate.

The indignity of Mr Dimbleby and Mr Grade’s exposure led some commentators to allege that the process of choosing a chairman of the BBC had now descended to the level of comedy. If only.

At least the BBC allows us to vote for our favourite comedies. But when it comes to choosing who will actually run the corporation, we, the public, are treated no better than fools or horses; dumb creatures who simply have to accept what they’re given.

The chairman of the BBC presides over the nation’s most important cultural institution, secures the appointment of its editor-in-chief and oversees the disbursement of billions of pounds of public money. That money is levied by a flat-rate tax that all television owners have to pay. The licence fee may be the least worst way to fund the BBC, but at the moment it is taxation without representation. For as last week’s farce underlined, the corporation’s future is decided without reference to principles of openness, fairness or accountability.

We, the conscripted funders of the BBC, are not permitted to know who is being considered to run it in the future. Medieval popes were chosen with greater transparency. And what we have been able to glean from the reporting of the process underlines its closed nature. Messrs Dimbleby and Grade, along with other likely runners, such as Lord Watson of Richmond and Baroness Young of Old Scone, are all usual suspects in any establishment line-up.

These Tuscan-holidaying, soggy centrist-voting lords of conventional wisdom are all chips off the same consensual block that managed Britain into decline in the postwar years. It does not matter whether they’re nominally Tory, like the eminent place-seeker Christopher Bland, or conventionally Blairite, like the quango queen Lady Young, the people who find themselves at the top of the BBC are all members of the same party: the agreeable Hampstead dinner party. It’s about time that those of us who pick up the bill for it demanded the right to send out the invitations.

My modest proposal is to let in a little daylight on the magic of BBC governance. Why can’t we see the candidates for BBC chairman, and for that matter the rest of the governors and the director-general, interviewed in public? In the US, all major public appointments face congressional hearings. Here, we interview members of the Monetary Policy Committee before the Treasury Select Commitee to ratify their appointment. Why shouldn’t those who aspire to run the BBC be put through their paces before the Culture Select Commitee? Indeed, why shouldn’t we be given a chance to vote on the candidates? After all, it’s our money they’ll be spending.

The BBC allows us to vote for our favourite book, best-loved sitcom and the greatest Briton ever. On each occasion the viewing public has responded with enthusiasm and intelligence. I would instinctively trust an electorate that votes for Tolkien, Jane Austen, Brunel and Churchill much more than a Department for Culture selectorate that draws its names from Peter Mandelson’s Rolodex.

What, after all, are the arguments against greater democracy? That the BBC would become too politicised? Do me a favour. Have you listened to the Today programme recently? The BBC is already a political creature. The problem is that its politics aren’t Britain’s.

Last year, the researchers Martin McElwee and Glyn Gaskarth conducted a study of the BBC’s output for the modernising Tory group CChange. For the record, I chair its sister think-tank, Policy Exchange. The McElwee/Gaskarth report, Guardian of the Airwaves, didn’t take the BBC to task for discriminating against the Conservatives, or any other party. Producers’ guidelines ensure that the official parties are given a broadly fair shout. But what they did find was a persistent bias against ideas from the broad right of centre. Whether it was innate hostility to selection in education, a presumption that private enterprise was in the wrong and pressure groups calling for more public money were in the right, or jaundiced suspicion towards a vigorous prosecution of the War on Terror, one world view predominated. That of The Guardian’s comment pages. All of us pay for the BBC, but the views of only a fraction of us predominate.

It should be no surprise, then, that Andrew Gilligan’s flawed report wasn’t scrutinised properly until too late. Because its presumptions chimed with the prevailing prejudices of far too many BBC executives.

Although Gilligan’s errors eventually led to resignations, and apologies, there are worrying signs that many in the BBC still don’t get it. An internal investigation into the Gilligan affair has been denounced as a “kangaroo court”, the BBC’s own “Guantanamo” and a reason for industrial action. Why do those who make a career out of questioning others believe that they should be immune from all scrutiny themselves? The BBC plays a critical role in our democracy. It’s about time democracy started playing a role within the BBC.

michael.gove@thetimes.co.uk

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