Writing in the Daily Mail today, Robin Aitken flags up his new book, Can We Trust The BBC? in a devastating critique of what he describes as a form of “institutionally Leftist”. This follows on from the Daily’s editor Paul Dacre who lashed out at the Corporation in January.

I pick out one or two of Aitken’s key points,

In 1984 I returned to BBC Scotland after covering the Tory conference in Brighton. The IRA had come close to assassinating Margaret Thatcher with a bomb and the country was in shock.

Apart, that is, from some of my BBC colleagues. ‘Pity they missed the bitch,’ one confided to me.

and,

That was coupled with a devotion to the European ideal. I remember arguing with a senior editor about the Maastricht Treaty and saying it was an issue of democracy, not economics. He told me I was mad.

Robin Aitken worked for the BBC from 1978 to 2005.