Brussels calling

You can tell that the BBC has got its charter renewal in the bag. This morning on the Radio 4 Today Programme, it devoted nearly nine minutes of the prime time slot - 7.35 – to two raving Europhiles, Roger Liddel and then Keith Vaz, to talk about "making the case of Europe".

Liddle was repeating much of what he told The Independent last Wednesday (picked up by The Telegraph on Saturday if anyone is interested, while Vaz was given free reign to describe a "no" vote as a "catastrophe", declaring that we will we "totally isolated" in Europe unless we approve the EU constitution.

By way of balance, the BBC gave a slot to Conservative Peer Lord Blackwell at five to nine, not to counter the earlier nine-minute propaganda session, but to express reservations about the government's "information" programme on the EU being a tad partisan.

Not for nothing is the BBC nicknamed the "Brussels Broadcasting Corporation". In the manner of Lord Haw-Haw who ran the English speaking programme for the Nazis during the Second World War, perhaps now it should start its news programmes with the words "Brussels calling".