Auntie Nadine

There have been, and there are, former Prime Ministers who have not been given studies of two hours' duration on the BBC, broadcast at nine o'clock on what used to be called terrestrial television.

Yet over this Tuesday and next, such is being accorded to Mary Whitehouse. The line is that while she was wrong on this or that individual issue, she was right in general, and Britain would have been a much better place today if she had won, but the metropolitan liberal elite ridiculed and no-platformed here in the cancel culture of its day. 

The main voice of dissent was David Sullivan, and he was jaw-dropping in his admission that pornographers had published their material as "sex education" in order to get around the law, exactly as she had been pilloried at the time for having said. Of course, everyone has always known that. But it is now a matter of record.

Meanwhile, a quarter of the BBC's staff are to be from working-class backgrounds by 2027. As you laughed all you liked at Mrs Whitehouse, so you can laugh all you like at Nadine Dorries, but she has put the fear of God into the BBC and its circle. One in four of its staff will now have to come from the working class, which is only a start but which is at least that, and the official line is now that Mary Whitehouse was right.