Rod Liddle: how to fix the BBC. ‘Assuming the BBC is still in existence by the time you read this,’ writes Rod Liddle, ‘the task facing the next director-general would have been evident’ from Nick Robinson’s ‘pompous monologue’ on Monday’s Today programme. This was ‘an organisation in utter denial’. Even ‘the most stoic defenders of Auntie’ among former staff wonder when the rot set in. Within the BBC, Liddle found, there seems to be ‘a unanimity of denial’ – ‘only once people have left’ can ‘they smell the rotting fish’. From Liddle’s experience, BBC staff ‘understand bias as an abstract idea, but they do not understand that the bias is them’. When Liddle worked there and showed a senior executive evidence of less airtime for anti-EU politicians, he was told ‘these people are mad’. Since then, the BBC has been ‘captured by the identitarian left’. BBC staff are unable to see beyond their ‘monocultural’ worldview, however many reports highlight it. ‘Still in denial,’ he suggests, ‘they slouch towards extinction.’

Lara Brown: the buzzing bias of the BBC News app. According to Lara Brown, the ‘most powerful person in British media is not Rupert Murdoch or Lord Rothermere’. Instead, ‘it’s the editor who pushes out the BBC News app alerts’. Last year, it overtook Apple News to become Britain’s most-visited news service. Brown has ‘analysed a year of alerts’ and found ‘a clear pattern’: ‘stories that flatter progressive orthodoxies are amplified, while those that challenge them are quietly sidelined’. The Israel/Gaza war dominated coverage, with 139 push notifications mentioning Israel, 55 Hamas, and an obsessive focus ‘on Israel’s actions in the war’ but no comparable insight into ‘Hamas’s torrent of propaganda and misinformation’. Immigration was similarly ignored – on 20 September, when it was reported 1,000 migrants had crossed the Channel in a single day, the app lead with Strictly. Users will find little coverage of rising anti-Semitism or protests outside asylum hotels. Subscribers learn only about a ‘siloed worldview completely out of touch with reality’.

Tim Shipman: stealth secretary. To avoid ‘the threat of continual leadership challenges’, suggests Tim Shipman, Keir Starmer must deal with ‘the cost of living, rampant illegal immigration and the state of the NHS’. But any minister who makes ‘serious progress’ in these areas then becomes a viable leadership candidate. That might explain why a Downing Street aide chose to accuse Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, of plotting a coup. ‘This is an attempt to smoke’ Streeting out and ‘rule him out’, one cabinet minister concludes. If so, it has backfired. A senior Labour source notes: ‘They have achieved the impossible – they have made Wes popular with the backbenches.’ Shabana Mahmood is the minister tasked with illegal immigration, with plans to scrap permanent refugee status. Labour ‘need some leftie lawyers to be dropping their marmalade’, according to sources close to Mahmood. But the more Downing Street tries to save Starmer, the more his premiership seems like ‘a slow-motion homage to Liz Truss’.

Allan Mallinson: how DEI conquered the army. ‘Last month,’ reveals Allan Mallinson, a letter from Lieutenant-General David Eastman, the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, ‘exposed the moral confusion, panic even, obsessing parts of the British Army.’ Eastman branded it ‘a strategic necessity’ for regiments to disassociate from private members’ clubs that refuse to change in the direction of ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ (DEI). DEI has begun to ‘erode the regimental system on which the army operates’, with ‘petty restrictions on cherished traditions’ and ‘the alienation of traditional recruiting areas’. The ‘rise of woke policies in the army matters’, Mallinson argues, because ‘it hides the real issue: our military is woefully undermanned and underequipped’. Each month, 300 more soldiers have been leaving than are enlisting, with gaps often filled by non-UK nationals with poor English. Those who do serve find themselves hounded by lawyers. The army needs to scrap DEI in favour of the mantra that once attracted many: ‘Be the best.’

John Power: drug abuse and homelessness are escalating in Britain’s cities. ‘For people who commute into Westminster,’ John Power reports, ‘it is becoming commonplace to be spat at, lunged at and screamed at to “fuck off” by individuals who appear to be high on illegal drugs.’ Rough sleeping has long been a problem in the area, but everyone Power spoke to – including local councillors and charity workers – agreed ‘the problem has become much worse in the past few years’. ‘Only 37 per cent of Westminster’s rough sleepers are UK nationals,’ Power notes, with foreigners drawn in by the borough’s charity services, train stations and hostels. ‘Although Westminster’s vagrancy problem is not representative of the national picture’, Power warns that it ‘foreshadows’ what much of the country could look like because of ‘progressive approaches to managing homelessness’. That Westminster ‘is deluged with rough sleepers with acute problems’ should be seen as ‘a national embarrassment’ – and a warning for those in power of ‘confusing tolerance with neglect’.