Could ‘glam new face of BBC politics’ Laura Kuenssberg be secret weapon in Auntie’s fight for survival?

‘Glam new face of BBC politics,’ the Daily Mail’s headline purred, while The Telegraph splashed a leggy photo of Laura Kuenssberg beneath mostly benign words.

If the warm, rather than usually withering, front-page reactions by two of the public broadcaster’s fiercest media critics are anything to go by, the Beeb’s appointment of its first female political editor has been a masterstroke in its fight for survival.

Beyond the basic charms approved of by newspaper editors with 1950s mindsets, Italian-born and Glaswegian-raised Kuenssberg is also an excellent journalist with a deep intellect, powerful interviewing skills and a laudable ability to be impartial – something her predecessor Nick Robinson was sometimes accused of lacking.

Bosses at the BBC, which faces its most strenuous government attacks ever, may have found a new secret weapon to win more of the public on side.

And here it is worth pointing out that we – not Whitehall – pay for the most respected and best known broadcaster in the world: yes, the BBC is ours. We should defend it.

Yet Auntie has at times made it hard for herself to always be loved: Four years ago, the Jimmy Savile scandal trashed two formerly beloved institutions in a single stroke.

Not only had it failed to tackle Britain’s most prolific paedophile, but – even when it had evidence after Savile’s death – its own Newsnight probe was suppressed (and, more embarrassingly yet, ran tribute programmes to the evil entertainer shortly after the TV investigation was quashed).

The BBC’s reputation has also been plagued by bloated salaries, pensions and pay-offs to stars and senior staff.

But its biggest threat has come in the wake of the May 8 and the election of the most hostile government it has ever faced.

One of Prime Minister David Cameron’s first acts as he formed the first fully Tory Cabinet in 18 years was to appoint John Whittingdale as Culture Secretary.

As chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport backbench committee, he was an unrelenting critic of the BBC and described the licence fee as “worse than the poll tax”.

Whittingdale’s “regressive” argument is all the more bizarre seeing as he’s an ardent Thatcherite who worked closely with the Iron Lady when she introduced the poll tax the 1980s and has otherwise always strongly favoured taxes that most benefit the rich.

His view of the media is largely in tandom with Rupert Murdoch, whose goons he likes to mix with and whose empire he failed to criticise during the phone hacking scandal (leaving the public interrogation of the News International boss in 2011 to Labour’s Tom Watson and Paul Farrelly).

Like the owner of Britain’s best-selling newspaper (The Sun) and largest pay-TV broadcaster (Sky), Whittingdale is a figurehead of powerful right-wingers whose mission is to weaken and destroy the BBC – and this group spies an opportunity in the surprise Tory election victory.

Their shared passion for neoliberal dogma means that, even though polls show the BBC is among the most popular British institutions and makes a raft of much-loved and high-quality programmes, they question why a public-funded body should be able to produce mass entertainment and admire the privatised American model.

They also believe the BBC is biased, a complaint often also made by those on the left and repeated most vociferously by press barons like Murdoch, whose newspapers’ own reporting is desperately distorted.

On this basis it would be an added bonus for them if they could to turn public debate into one even more dominated by private commercial interests.

It was amid this stormy sea of right-wing mouth-froth and Tory triumphalism that Chancellor George Osborne decided to accuse the Corporation of having “imperial ambitions and suggested it reduced its scope, especially online, before, at the Budget, ordering it to spend £150million-a-year subsidising free TV licences for over-75s.

By this logic of outsourcing a government benefit, the Treasury may as well ask the BBC to also contribute towards the state pensions of its elderly viewers.

As well its budget, the Beeb is also having its independence eroded – with Cameron recently demanding its reporters to not refer to “Islamic State” without the preface of “so-called”.

Few governments are immune to such interventions of course – and Labour prompted one of the Corporation’s biggest crises in 2004 after its whitewash Hutton report forced BBC chairman Gavyn Davies and director-general Greg Dyke to resign.

Yet, while Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell would do anything to avoid blame for using an allegedly “sexed up” dossier to take Britain into an illegal war, they never questioned the very existence of the BBC like so many of today’s Tories.

It is in this new hostile atmosphere that BBC bosses must tread a careful path to avoid giving ammunition to ministers who want to destroy it while also building strong and clear public support.

In this light, the excellent Laura Kuenssberg’s appointment can be seen as a good start in what it certain to be a long war over the fate of our treasured national broadcaster.

I also deeply hope that others will be willing to stand up for an institution that, for all its flaws, is one of the most successful at bringing people together.