Auntie Won't Let It Go

The BBC campaigned relentlessly for the Oxonian public schoolboy and neocon sympathiser Chris Huhne to be made Leader of the Liberal Democrats. It has never shown anything but spite towards the man who beat him, Sir Menzies Campbell. And on The Word At One, it was actually pushing Huhne as an alternative Leader against his express will, right there in the room! Specifically, that pushing was being done by Martha Kearney, whose appointment to The World At One has significantly lowered its tone, so that one expects, any day now, questioning of the coffee-and-underwear variety to which Kearney subjected David Cameron and David Davis on Woman's Hour.

Kearney appears to have secured her present appointment as a sort of consolation prize for not being made Political Editor of the BBC despite a shrieking campaign by Polly Toynbee in the Guardian, which consisted of nothing more than "but she's a woman, so you have to appoint her!" Toynbee is currently running another such campaign, in support of Harriet Harman for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. When that also comes to nought, how should the BBC console Harman, and why?