These long years of Conservative rule have been bewildering for many liberal and leftwing Britons. Your party being out of power often is. But this time, as well as all-too-familiar feelings of frustration and impotence, many non-Tories have a new sense of betrayal. They are realising they can’t rely on the BBC to stand up to the government. During the previous era of Tory dominance, under Margaret Thatcher, the corporation clashed with her administration sufficiently often for the official history of the BBC then to be titled Pinkoes and Traitors. Challenging governments is what many Britons who love the BBC – and some who do not – believe the corporation always does. Officially, the BBC agrees. Its editorial guidelines state: “We must always scrutinise arguments, question consensus and hold power to account.” Yet since the Tories returned to office in 2010, it has become increasingly clear that the BBC is not properly fulfilling these roles. From its inadequate coverage of the huge death toll caused by David Cameron’s austerity policies to its less than even-handed treatment of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership; from its blunders during the 2019 election – such as allowing Boris Johnson to avoid an interrogation by Andrew Neil – to its presentation of Johnson’s often extreme administration as just another Tory government, the corporation has failed to give its huge audience the full picture. Instead, it has often played down the Conservatives’ excesses and disasters. There was a typical example on the 5 live breakfast show last week. One of the co-presenters, Rachel Burden, was reviewing newspaper coverage of the latest Tory sleaze scandal. “They talk about one in four Conservative MPs [having] additional jobs,” she said. “But of course there are MPs from right across the political spectrum who have second jobs … ” The fact that the vast majority of MPs with second jobs are Tories was almost completely obscured. Burden is a good broadcaster and not a partisan one. But such moments reveal that, contrary to its reputation, the BBC is less interested in depicting the realities of power in Britain than in achieving what it regards as political balance. Last year, the then editorial director of BBC News, Kamal Ahmed, told its senior political editors that they should be neither “too soft on the government” nor “too condemnatory”, and should instead seek the “delicate middle ground”. Similar instructions have been issued by BBC executives throughout its history. Yet the Johnson government is different from Britain’s other governments since the corporation was founded. It is divisive by design. It ignores our democratic norms. And it sees media organisations as it sees most interest groups: as either enemies to be defeated or obedient allies. To try to find a “middle ground” with such a bullying regime seems an unrealistic, even naive, strategy for such a worldly organisation as the BBC. So far its coverage of the government – however helpful it has been to Johnson – has not earned it any favours. The government has made threatening noises about freezing or abolishing the BBC’s licence fee. It has appointed Nadine Dorries, a fierce critic of the corporation, as culture secretary. And for over a year, despite endless controversy, its preferred choice as the new head of the broadcasting regulator Ofcom, which oversees the BBC, has been the former editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre: perhaps the most famous BBC-hater in the country. Meanwhile, the corporation’s credibility with non-Tories has steadily drained away. In leftwing circles, it’s commonplace to hear people say that they’ve stopped using the BBC for news. For some lefties, the mainstream media has never and will never be good enough, and the internet provides ever more alternatives. But other non-Tory viewers and listeners that the BBC has alienated – such as remainers enraged by its coverage of Brexit – include allies it may regret having lost, if and when the Conservatives get really rough. It’s possible to argue that the BBC has no choice but to cover the Johnson government so respectfully. Ofcom requires that all British broadcasters practise “due impartiality”. But that phrase is open to a degree of interpretation, as the regulator’s own website points out. The word “due”, it says, “means … appropriate to the subject” of each programme. In other words, the impartiality of a broadcaster’s entire output does not have to be absolute. For much of Thatcher’s premiership, the BBC had enough confidence to produce programmes that made her party and the state very uncomfortable. The director-general from 1982 to 1987, Alasdair Milne, so riled her government by his independence that it eventually forced him to resign. It’s hard to imagine such a confrontation happening now. Thanks to tight licence fee settlements imposed by the Tories since 2010, the BBC is preoccupied by cost-cutting rather than pushing political boundaries. It also has a very different director-general. Tim Davie is a former Conservative activist and local council candidate. The corporation’s tentative approach to Johnson’s premiership is also part of its broader failure to cover rightwing populism robustly. The BBC often skated over the authoritarian aspects of Donald Trump’s presidency, mesmerised by the spectacle and keen not to be seen as liberal or elitist. When I complained once to a BBC executive about this, he rolled his eyes: “Do we have to say he’s a fascist every time?” Subsequent events suggest it might have been better journalism. Like Britain, the BBC is always changing, but changing slowly. Eventually, perhaps when the current Tory ascendancy is obviously crumbling, the corporation will become tougher again on the ruling party – assuming it first survives whatever it has in store for it. Yet the BBC’s dealings with the Tories since 2010 ought to teach liberals and leftists, once and for all, that the corporation’s independent-minded phases are the exception, not the rule. If you want a broadcaster that will always “hold power to account”, look somewhere else. Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist