After a calamitous few weeks for Boris Johnson, Operation Save Big Dog ground into gear today – a slew of populist policies designed to get backbench MPs and voters back on side in the wake of the “partygate” scandal and move the news agenda on from boozing and hypocrisy at the heart of government, writes Mattie Brignal.
One of those measures, announced by Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, is the long-threatened and much-debated scrapping of the BBC license fee.
Everyone with a television or who watches iPlayer is currently required by law to pay the levy which raises £3.2bn a year from 27 million households. The new plan is to freeze the license fee at £159 a year until 2024, a real terms cut. It would then rise in line with inflation until 2027, at which point the fee would be scrapped and replaced with a different funding model, yet to be decided.
