The BBC’s chairman Richard Sharp resigned on Friday after his involvement in a loan for then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson called into question the broadcaster’s much-touted impartiality.
The Conservative government in the United Kingdom has long been accused of attempting to stifle the publicly funded BBC, and the appointment of Richard Sharp – a wealthy past donor to the party – was condemned at the time by opposition parties.
The BBC chair is appointed by the government. Sharp was later revealed to have acted as a go-between to facilitate Johnson’s £800,000 ($1 million) loan.
Sharp, who worked at Goldman Sachs with Johnson’s successor Rishi Sunak, denied any wrongdoing but said he was stepping down to avoid becoming “a distraction from the Corporation’s good work.”
Sharp’s past ties to the Conservatives, on the other hand, had already created a distraction for both the broadcaster and the government.
Critics were outraged last month when the BBC suspended former England star Gary Lineker from its flagship football highlights show.
Lineker accused the Sunak government of using Nazi-era rhetoric to promote its hardline immigration policies on Twitter.
The Sharp-led board rushed Lineker back into work after other presenters refused to work, throwing the BBC’s sports schedule across TV and radio into disarray.
Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer thanked Sharp for his service as the government began the delicate search for a replacement for one of Britain’s most visible positions, which he will leave at the end of June.
Sunak has already had to find a replacement for Dominic Raab, who was forced out last Friday after another investigation found him guilty of bullying civil servants.
Lineker chimed in once more, arguing that the BBC chair should not be chosen by the government. “Not now, never,” he said on Twitter.
Sunak, on the other hand, refused to rule out another political appointee, telling reporters that he would not “prejudge” the hiring process.
The BBC is being “dragged through the mud” by the Conservatives, according to the leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey.
“Everything that Conservative politicians touch becomes a shambles.” “They are not fit to govern our great country,” he declared ahead of the British local elections on Thursday.
“Richard Sharp shouldn’t have been appointed by Boris Johnson in the first place, and to make matters worse, Rishi Sunak failed to act with leadership when he fired him.”
Sharp “failed to disclose potential perceived conflicts of interest” to a committee of MPs vetting his appointment by Johnson in early 2021, according to an investigation conducted by a senior lawyer.
Sharp was accused of “significant errors of judgment” by the same committee of MPs in February for failing to disclose his involvement in the loan.
Sharp put Johnson in touch with a distant cousin of the prime minister who extended him the credit facility in late 2020, while he was being considered for the BBC job.
Sharp has denied receiving the job as a favor for assisting the cash-strapped Johnson, but he announced his resignation shortly after Heppinstall delivered his report to Sunak’s government.
He admitted to violating conflict-of-interest rules for top UK officials but claimed it was “inadvertent and not material” to his appointment to the BBC.
