Like the Tory-Labour duopoly and the NHS, the BBC is a hangover from an age that’s dying. We must find how to make the media relevant again, before it’s too late, our Writer at Large Neil Mackay argues

Twenty years ago, I wrote The War on Truth. The book was based around my coverage of the manipulation of intelligence by America and Britain to justify invading Iraq. As we know, the intelligence case was based on lies, manipulation, omission and exaggeration.

I made much in the book about my fears that what our politicians were doing would have profound consequences for democracy. Tony Blair and George Bush misled us about the greatest issue a country can face: whether or not to go to war. In doing so, they poured acid all over the notion of facts, truth and reality.

They created the circumstances which made it understandable why people lost all trust in the establishment. If politicians could lie about war, what wouldn’t they lie about?

Bush and Blair paved the way for today’s ‘post-truth’ age, an era defined by Donald Trump who is often accused of having a habitual disregard for facts.

Read more from Neil Mackay

In the War on Truth, I speculated that one day we’d live in a world where people would argue over whether black was white and up was down. We’re there now. This is it. These are the conditions which led to the BBC walking itself up a scaffold built by its own hand and putting its head in the noose it fashioned.

The BBC is simply another of those great 20th century pillars which are........

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