Last week around 70 MPs, mainly from the Conservative Party, wrote to the BBC Director General complaining of the broadcaster’s “skewed” and negative coverage of the Brexit process, and warning that if the BBC is not trusted by politicians and the public its future “will be in doubt”.

The letter was given significant publicity by the right-wing press which together with the right of the Conservative Party has long complained of left-wing bias at the 90-year-old national broadcaster.

Going back to the earliest years of radio, Conservative MPs accused the BBC of “socialist leanings” and “perpetual anti-Conservative policy”, and from the 1970s it became a bête noire for the New Right, which complained of its allegedly profligate expenditure as well as its social liberalism.