Donald Trump vs the BBC is a thing now swollen like an appendix fit to burst. Let’s prod and see where we get.

The US president has threatened to sue the BBC for a billion dollars over an edition of Panorama. Wow, Trump watches Panorama! You’ll be telling me next that he hunkers down in front of Mastermind, shouting out answers through mouthfuls of cheeseburger.

Well, no – he doesn’t watch Panorama, even when it’s about him (his specialist subject). But he was alerted to a programme he never watches thanks to internal chaos at the BBC and pressure from the usual suspect newspapers.

The edition of Panorama in question was shown before last year’s US election and looked back at the insurrection of January 6, 2021.

It condensed into a clip a speech Trump made just before his supporters marched on the United States Capitol.

All the words used were undeniably spoken by Trump. You can find a transcript online. That was one long whiny ramble of a speech. It needed condensing more than anything that ever ended up in a can of soup.

Nothing Trump said makes you think, oh, he’s only trying to calm things down. The words ‘fight’ or’ march’ are not usually repeated so often when attempting conciliation (which, of course, he wasn’t).

Did Trump urge his supporters to march on the Capitol and protest about the election he lost? At such junctures it is traditional to say history will decide and nod your head sagely.

The trouble is, Trump has been busy rewriting history, removing official mentions of the Capitol riot, while also issuing pardons for around 1,000 of his supporters who were convicted of serious offences.

That edition of Panorama was only shown in this country – and, anyway, as Trump won the election shortly afterwards it can hardly be said to have damaged his reputation. He’s perfectly capable of doing that all by himself. Will he get anywhere with this Florida court case? Is he now going to sue all the world’s media? Or is it just part of his usual bully boy grift?

You won’t be surprised to hear that ejected Tory prime minister Boris Johnson is about to burst forth from that appendix. He set all this in motion when he reshaped the BBC in his image. As part of this, Robbie Gibb, Theresa May’s former communications chief, was appointed to the BBC’s board. This appears to have made the board in part anti-BBC.

Michael Prescott, a former Murdoch journalist and until recently an independent external adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee, was the man who raised the contentious edit in a memo to the board.

He is said also to have made claims of systemic bias in coverage of Trump, Gaza and transgender rights, according to the Guardian.

All this led to the shock resignation of the director general, Tim Davie, and the head of news, Deborah Turness.

Johnson, typically, says talk of this being a right-wing instigated attack on the BBC is “complete bollocks”. So it’s almost certainly completely true.

Are the Telegraph, Mail and others attacking the BBC because that’s just what they do? Or do they want to bring about its collapse to make room for more right-wing broadcasters, maybe funded from the US? That’s a lasting worry.

And this row about the BBC being left-wing comes just as many people are complaining about the BBC being too friendly to the right, especially to Reform UK and Nigel Farage.

To my eyes the BBC clearly favours Farage. I even put in an official complaint (result: nothing much). Farage receives endless unquestioning airtime on the BBC. Yet he would abolish it in an instant – along with the NHS.

Farage, who spends more time in the US than in his constituency of Claton, turned on his usual Trumpy toady act, complaining about the BBC’s attack on the “leader of the free world”. Good god, if he’s our leader we’re done for.

Honestly, I am more concerned about an elected British politician expending so much energy on doing down his own country. And to think he calls himself a patriot.

The BBC should defend itself and not bow down to Trump. Sir Keir Starmer should look at the running of the BBC – but he says he won’t be doing that. Perhaps it would just be better if politicians of all persuasions had no say in who runs the BBC.

Lord Patten, a politician who sees both sides, has been chairman both of the BBC and the Conservative Party. He had this to say…

“I don’t think that we should allow ourselves to be bullied into thinking that the BBC is only any good, if it reflects the prejudice of the last person who shouted at it.”

Quite so.

The BBC, for its faults and annoyances, for its occasional self-importance and inwardness, is too important, too central to British life, to be brought down by right-wing media owners considering only their own interests and pockets.

Just ask the 11 million people who watched the final of Celebrity Traitors.