The BBC is too polite by design and Piers Morgan is right to pick a fight

Sorry, but it’s true

The best hip hop battles occur when two MCs that are almost perfectly matched clash. That’s why when Nas and Jay-Z went head-to-head, they produced Ether and Takeover, two of the finest diss tracks ever committed to wax. In the media, beefs also tend to be most entertaining when you have two combatants of equal standing. That is not the case with the battle between Piers ‘The Mouth’ Morgan in the red corner and Dan ‘Love me!’ Walker in the blue corner.

As the government boycott of the show Morgan co-anchors with the preternaturally patient Susanna Reid continues, the volatile presenter’s accurate analysis and attacks on their handling of the pandemic get more devastating with every day. The fact that BBC Breakfast still plays host to ministers has brought that show’s co-host Dan Walker into Piers Morgan’s sights.

Yesterday saw the latest example of them exchanging shots, after Morgan rightly declared that Walker had “blown” an interview with the Health & Social Care Secretary, the slowly deflating Matt Hancock, a man who constantly looks like he has just zipped his dick in his fly.

Morgan’s shot across Walker’s bows was met with the usual run of BBC News deflection, appeals to authority, pointing to BBC Breakfast’s higher viewing figures — it is actually haemorrhaging support while Good Morning Britain’s figures continue to rise — along with some other half-hearted digs at Morgan.

Elsewhere on Twitter, Andrew Marr liked a tweet suggesting Walker, who struggles to grill a League One manager with a run of poor results, should stick to sport and stop trying to interview ministers. Trouble at Aunty? Certainly I’ve heard from people in the harder end of BBC News who are tired of Breakfast’s soft-soaping, fact-light approach to politics coverage. “They squander their opportunities,” one BBC insider told me. “But execs think Dan is very likeable.”

In a contest of likeability, Walker beats Morgan every time. But I don’t care about that; I care about results. Morgan scents blood, will push hard for answers, and has, with Reid and the GMB production team, given space for real debates. You will see people of colour and other neglected voices get time to speak on Good Morning Britain. On BBC Breakfast, you get fluff