Liberal Conservatives such as Damian Green and Ruth Davidson are queuing up to denounce the Government over the privatisation of Channel 4, which is of course their right, but when they try to drag Margaret Thatcher’s name into their campaign they need to be reminded of the truth about her and the television channel she created 40 years ago.

Back in 1982 there were only three TV channels, and Thatcher was interested in having a genuine diversity of views broadcast because, in contrast to the image the Left loves to portray, she was genuinely interested in debate. But even during her lifetime, Channel 4 fell victim to Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics, that “any organisation not explicitly Right-wing sooner or later becomes Left-wing”.

In its original incarnation under the formidably talented broadcaster Jeremy Isaacs, the channel was committed to serious programming, and giving space to a range of views from across the political spectrum. When Jimmy Goldsmith first voiced his opposition to the EU, for example, it was in a lecture for Channel 4’s Opinions series in 1993. The libertarian Martin Durkin was allowed to make documentaries on subjects such as global warming and the national debt. The Left tended to have more of a say, but within a reasonable framework that also allowed conservative voices to be heard.

It is hard to spot the precise moment when Channel 4 slipped into its present role as a virulently anti-Tory, crypto-Corbynite propaganda outlet, parroting the views of London’s metropolitan establishment. But the idea that Mrs Thatcher would today oppose the privatisation of Channel 4, as posited in a tweet by Damian Green, is ludicrous. 

The way that Channel 4 has behaved over the past decade and a half has meant that she would be cheering on Boris Johnson and Nadine Dorries in their extension of her signature privatisation policy to an operation that was worthwhile when there were three channels but is meaningless now there are 333. For the Government’s plans are essentially Thatcherite, about attracting more investment, acknowledging that governments don’t know more about running a business than businesses, and that in a multi-media democracy the government shouldn’t be owning a TV channel anyhow. 

Readers will decide for themselves the moment when the Left started to dominate Channel 4. Was it in 2003 when Dorothy Byrne, who later called Boris Johnson a “known liar” in a public speech, was appointed the head of news and current affairs? The channel’s ingrained dislike of the Prime Minister was seen when a reporter was accused of coaxing two women who had been attacked on a London bus into effectively blaming Boris for the crime and saying that he was “not fit to lead the UK”. Channel 4 has brushed off thousands of complaints to Ofcom about bias over the years.

Or was it in 2008 when it chose President Ahmadinejad of Iran to give its Alternative Christmas broadcast, who told viewers that Jesus was anti-American and anti-British? “If Christ were on Earth today,” he claimed, “undoubtedly He would stand with the people in opposition to bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers.” He even had the gall to call for “a return to human values” while his regime instituted the death penalty for Iranians converting to Christianity. 

Then there were all of Jon Snow’s antics in his role as presenter of Channel 4 News between 1989 and 2021. He used to refuse to wear a poppy on Remembrance Day, denouncing what he called “poppy fascism”. In June 2017 he was heard chanting “F— the Tories!” at Glastonbury, and two years later when reporting from a pro-Brexit rally he said that he had “never seen so many white people in one place”. The format of Channel 4 “debates” tended to have two Left-wingers against one conservative, with Snow, the “moderator”, interjecting such remarks as the claim that Tory austerity had “gripped people by the throat”.

In June 2019 a comedy show, Year of the Rabbit, depicted a foamingly Right-wing campaigner called “Neil Fromage” being shot in the head. The Guardian described it as “a heady mix of period detail, gleeful anachronism and baroque profanity”. Understandably its very obvious target, Nigel Farage, was less impressed, saying “with Channel 4, we have reached a point where they are so partisan, politically, in everything they do that they now consistently go beyond what’s acceptable”.

A few months later, during the 2019 election, Channel 4 replaced Boris Johnson with a melting ice sculpture at a climate change debate, one at which they refused to allow Michael Gove to speak. When Boris’s victory in the 2019 election was announced, the specially selected Channel 4 audience booed. 

At Christmas 2020, the reliably republican Channel 4 produced a truly grotesque takeoff of the Queen’s Christmas message, in which Her Majesty’s head was superimposed on an actress’s body by computer-generated imagery, and she was depicted making jokes about lavatory rolls and a pathetic double entendre about being seated “on the throne”.

All of this would have left Margaret Thatcher sickened and embarrassed about the Frankenstein that she had created, and all in favour of forcing Channel 4 to face the cold winds of competition, albeit around 20 years too late.

Andrew Roberts is a trustee of the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust