WARREN Buffet is arguably the most successful investor in history. He is worth many billions of dollars and his company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns some of the world’s most successful businesses. He was asked what he looked for in the people he worked with.

“I look for three things”, he said. ­“Intelligence, energy and integrity – and integrity is the most important. Because the very last thing you want in any set up is someone who has loads of ­intelligence and energy but no integrity. They will run the operation into the ground.”

Let’s apply Warren Buffet’s simple and straightforward logic to the BBC. It used to be a fine institution, staffed by folks who took their jobs seriously. Importantly, they saw their ­primary task was to uphold standards. This view extended across the corporation from entertainment to news. If their news offerings were perhaps a little dull compared to other outlets that was no bad thing, because integrity trumped sensationalism.

By and large the top people hired folks who shared these principles. They may have also shared a deep-seated London bias, but they had an occasional eye out for developments ­elsewhere. Governments valued this ­integrity too. Not least because it meant that when ­politicians did speak, they were not assumed to be crooks. Then, BBC saw its role as putting all politicians under the microscope and we all benefitted.

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But the BBC suffers from a major flaw – in common with all British institutions. In order to justify spending the people’s money they had to be overseen by the people’s ­representatives. This means it reports to politicians, as they ­control its purse strings.

The BBC has ever been sensitive to this ­connection. It has often stressed its ­independence. It has also emphasised that it is public broadcaster, not a state one. But this is ­bogus. Like all UK institutions this ­“independence” is phoney because it rests ­entirely on politicians keeping up the pretence that they do not interfere. In other words, the BBC is only independent to the extent that ­governments wish it to be. This is not new. It was baked into the institution at its conception.

These arrangements are based on the notion that politicians would behave themselves, or at least keep up appearances. But what would ­happen to this much vaunted “independence” if a government chose to misbehave? The answer was very British.

“We are all good chaps, and this would never happen. You need to trust us.”

This was always huge flaw. A flaw that was soon revealed when the first government that operated unfettered and in a moral vacuum turned up, headed by a prime minister who would not recognise ethics if he met it in his soup. The outcome was ­inevitable. The “good chaps” approach was junked and replaced by a policy of “who can do me a ­favour?”.

So, we now have a BBC stuffed to the rafters with Tory appointees. These include a chairman deeply implicated in arranging a massive loan for Boris Johnson prior to his appointment. His performance at the culture committee was vastly entertaining for some onlookers, while being deeply troubling to anyone with a sense of integrity.

The BBC chief, Richard Sharp, strove to ­convince the committee that he is a “good chap” fully skilled to run the BBC and the fact that he had donated many thousands of pounds to the Tory party was entirely incidental. He got the job because he was the best qualified guy around.

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The committee raised the perfectly valid points that he has no experience and that he had previously been rejected for a BBC ­appointment. In addition, that he had failed to mention his role as a loan arranger for party ­animal Johnson.

Will Sharp resign if inquiries into his ­application and appointment as BBC Chair ­criticise him for withholding key information about the huge loan he facilitated for Johnson? He won’t say. Consider that his role is to act as the conscience of the BBC and control its ­executive. Wow!

And the longer he stays the greater the ­damage there will be to the BBC’s reputation. Perdition now awaits the entire institution. (Of course, that ship has already sailed in this country, where its Scottish news branch has been totally-tabloid and hell-bound for ages.) This shambles could have been avoided with a written constitution that entrenched the ­independence of the BBC – and other ­institutions – by placing their governance ­beyond the reach of jobbing politicians.

In the meantime, Scotland desperately needs a Broadcasting Council with truly independent membership to oversee standards.

Professor Lesley Stark of Edinburgh University is our next guest on the TNT show.

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