Lisa Nandy announced the move to a permanent charter on Tuesday (Alamy)

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On Tuesday night, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy, announced that the BBC charter would be put on a permanent footing for the first time.

The cabinet minister said that “while the terms, the structures and the funding for the BBC will continue to be negotiated”, the move would end the “bizarre situation where if the charter isn’t agreed in time, the BBC ceases to exist”.

Under the current setup, the BBC charter is renewed every 10 years. Senior BBC figures, including the outgoing director general, Tim Davie, had been pushing for a permanent arrangement, arguing that it would protect the corporation’s long-term stability.

“We will act to future-proof this vital institution in these stormy times when public debate feels more toxic and polarised than ever, and too often the BBC becomes a lightning rod for the ongoing, exhausting culture wars,” Nandy told a Society of Editors conference in London.

A Survation poll, conducted before the announcement for campaign organisation 38 Degrees and shared with PoliticsHome, found that 44 per cent of respondents supported a permanent charter. In contrast, 13 per cent said they wanted the BBC’s future to be debated every decade. 

A majority of people who voted Labour (54 per cent), Conservative (50 per cent), and Green (50 per cent) at the 2024 general election backed a permanent charter for the BBC, while nearly half of Lib Dem voters (49 per cent) did so. 

The least supportive voter 2024 group was those who backed Reform UK at the last election, with 36 per cent supporting the move and 21 per cent opposing it.

There was also support across the age groups, with a majority of 25-34-year-olds (52 per cent) and 65-plus (50 per cent) telling Survation they supported a permanent BBC charter. 

The BBC’s role and funding have become a growing talking point in recent years, with Nigel Farage’s Reform vowing to end the licence fee if elected.

Controversies such as the corporation’s coverage of Bob Vylan’s 2025 Glastonbury set, when the act chanted “death, death to the IDF [Israel Defence Forces]”, have also led to enhanced political pressure from critics. 

However, the government has sought to defend the BBC, with Nandy this week describing it as “one of the two most important institutions in our country”, the other being the NHS.

Nandy insisted, however, that the move to a permanent charter would not lead to a reduction in accountability for the BBC, saying that the Labour government intended “to strengthen the accountability of the leadership of the BBC – not to politicians – but to the people it serves in every nation and region”.

Matthew McGregor, CEO at 38 Degrees, said the 10-year charter renewal system had been “a cloud of uncertainty hanging over one of our most valued national institutions”.

“Voters have no appetite to see our national broadcaster’s very existence under threat every 10 years. In announcing a permanent royal charter for the BBC, the government has made a popular, common-sense decision that is in line with public opinion,” he told PoliticsHome.

Damian Lyons Lowe, founder and chief executive at Survation, said: “The polling points to a clear, broad-based tilt towards greater long-term certainty for the BBC.

“Although many take a neutral view, the balance of opinion suggests the public is more comfortable with a settled arrangement than with periodically reopening the question of the BBC’s future.”

The poll surveyed 2,077 UK adults online between 13 and 16 March. 

Dr Martin Parsons is the author of a book on Conservativism and is a former overseas aid worker in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

There’s a definite irony in the fact the government have finally announced its official definition of Islamophobia, or as they now term it, ‘Anti-Muslim hostility’ when UK armed forces are engaged in defence against hostile actions from Iran.

I say that, because if you want to understand why there has been such a longstanding campaign for an official definition of Islamophobia, you need to go back to the Islamic revolution in Iran. The creation of the world’s first modern Islamist state in 1979 inspired Islamists around the world to emulate it in their own countries.

However, the first country to actually do so, was Pakistan, then a military dictatorship led by General Zia ul-Haq. Zia wasn’t actually an Islamist, but he saw the political advantage of shoring up his position by appealing to those inspired by events in Iran.

In 1982 he amended Pakistan’s Penal Code by introducing a law against desecrating the Qur’an. Then in 1986, a far more wide-ranging clause was added criminalising even implied or indirect criticism of Muhammad, effectively meaning that any criticism of Islam itself was potentially punishable by death. In fact, if you wanted a definition of Anti-Islamic ‘hostility’ s.295C of Pakistan’s Penal Code is pretty all embracing

“Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death.”

Pakistan already had incitement to religious hatred laws since British rule, but for the first time it now introduced laws which applied solely to Islam.

The demand for an Islamic blasphemy law quickly spread to the UK where a significant part of the Muslim community had family ties with Pakistan. However, it only really gained traction three years later with the Rushdie affair in 1989.

Most British Muslim organisations had wisely decided to quietly ignore Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses so as not to give it the oxygen of publicity. However, the Islamic Foundation, which was heavily influenced by the work of Mawdudi, the founding father of modern Islamism in the Indian subcontinent, saw it as an opportunity to galvanise support. Its high-profile campaign for the book to be banned was linked to calls for an Islamic blasphemy law. If there was one key point in the radicalisation of a significant minority of British Muslims, it was this.

Then in 1997, while the Rushdie affair was still sore in the minds of many British Muslims, the Runneymede Trust produced a report Islamophobia: a challenge for us all thereby introducing that term to public debate. Whilst widely lauded today that report actually sowed the seeds of later problems by defining Islamophobia as “dread or hatred of Islam and of Muslims” – effectively conflating protecting a belief system with protecting people.

The word ‘Islamophobia’ was then jumped on by Islamists around the world. In 2005 the OIC produced a ten-year strategy whose section on ‘combatting Islamophobia’ made no reference whatsoever to protecting Muslims from hate. Instead, it solely referred to protecting the religion of Islam from “defamation” and called for deterrent punishments to be introduced to counter it in western countries. Effectively, it was calling for an Islamic blasphemy law to be created across the west, under the guise of tackling ‘Islamophobia’.

At the same time, Tony Blair’s 2003 decision to go to war in Iraq proved the catalyst to actually achieve this as Labour’s previously rock-solid hold on the Muslim vote began to haemorrhage significantly to the Lib-Dems who opposed the war. Blair responded with a pledge in Labour’s 2005 manifesto to introduce a law against incitement to religious hatred. This was understood by many Muslim organisations as being the Islamic blasphemy law they had been campaigning for since the Rushdie affair sixteen years earlier.

However, the legislation largely failed to achieve its aim when the government lost a crucial vote on a Lord’s amendment to only make ‘threatening’ comments about religion illegal, not ‘abusive’ or ‘insulting’ ones. Ironically, Blair himself failed to attend the vote resulting in the government losing by a single vote.

However, the campaign against ‘Islamophobia’ continued largely focused on ‘educating’ the public sector. In doing so, it repeatedly conflated the legitimate aspiration of protecting Muslims as people, with attempts to proscribe any criticism of Islam.

In 2018 an All Party Parliamentary Group produced what it called a working definition of Islamophobia, which defined it as a type of racism that targets “expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” It was a definition which seemed innocuous enough until one realised that “expressions of Muslimness” included anything related to the religion of Islam.

The importance of making that distinction was laid bare in a report published only a year later by the Commission for Countering Extremism, which noted that

“One of the biggest successes of mainstream Islamists in Britain is, in fact, the campaign to normalise Islamophobia in public discourse as a concept that blurs the distinction between genuine anti-Muslim bigotry and the legitimate criticism of Islamism, outdated shari’a precepts and the illiberal practices justified by them.”

However, by this time the Labour Party had already committed itself to the APPG Islamophobia definition.

The shock loss of five supposedly safe Labour seats to Gaza independents in the 2024 general election sent shockwaves through the party and heightened demands for the government to formally adopt an official definition of Islamophobia.

But Keir Starmer also faced with a chorus of protest that the APPG definition of Islamophobia risked becoming a backdoor Islamic blasphemy law. He therefore appointed former Conservative attorney general Dominic Grieve to lead a working group to come up with a better definition. The result now finally published, is a vague definition of ‘Anti-Muslim hostility’ that as Sir John Jenkins recently observed in a paper for Policy Exchange is potentially even broader than the APPG definition of Islamophobia.

In the same way that Pakistan’s 1982 and 1986 blasphemy laws broke new ground with laws which solely protected Islam, so this definition provides special protections to Muslims not extended to Christians or other minorities. What Keir Starmer may also not appreciate, is that his actions in pushing this policy to shore up his own political support, do not simply mirror those of Tony Blair after the Iraq war, but also those of General Zia, Pakistan’s military dictator who introduced the country’s Islamic blasphemy laws in the 1980s.

Three months before the general election the Commission for Countering Extremism published another report, which noted that ‘blasphemy extremism’ which has exploded in Pakistan in recent years and particularly targets Christians, Ahmadiyya Muslims and other minorities, is now gaining momentum in the UK.

Far from tackling extremism, this official definition of Anti-Muslim hostility may actually fuel it.

In his first official comment on one of the most controversial issues in the history of African football, Patrice Motsepe acknowledged a clear contradiction in the decisions of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) committees, following the stripping of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) title from Senegal and its awarding to Morocco by a decision of the Appeals Committee.

The case, which sparked an unprecedented storm, dates back to the final, which Senegal won on the field (1-0) after extra time. However, the Appeals Committee reopened the case from a legal standpoint, arguing that what happened during the match—particularly the withdrawal and subsequent reversal of that decision—renders the victory illegitimate, thus administratively overturning the result to a 3-0 loss.

AFCON storm

Amidst an initial decision by the Disciplinary Committee upholding Senegal’s title, and a completely contradictory decision by the Appeals Committee, CAF president Motsepe issued statements asserting that “both decisions should be viewed as fair.” He emphasized that both committees comprise “among the most respected judges and lawyers on the continent,” in an attempt to contain a widening crisis of confidence within African football circles.

He continued:

If you look at the composition of those bodies, they reflect some of the most respected lawyers and judges on the continent. These are people who have integrity and have a track record. The independence is reflected by the decisions that were taken by the two bodies.

However, the most significant message in the CAF president’s statements was the implicit acknowledgment, rather than denial, of the magnitude of the crisis. He expressed his “frustration” with the spectacle of the tournament final, considering what transpired a threat to the efforts made over years to establish the principles of integrity and credibility in the administration of the game on the continent.

In parallel, Motsepe opened the door to legal escalation, affirming Senegal’s right to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), with CAF’s prior commitment to respecting the final ruling. This move effectively transfers the case from the corridors of the continental federation to the international sports judiciary.

The CAF president concluded his remarks with a message that goes beyond the decision itself, when he indicated that the “view of the public” in the 54 member countries represents the true standard of the federation’s credibility, in an acknowledgment that reflects a growing awareness that the crisis is no longer just a legal one, but has turned into a public test of the African public’s trust in its football institutions.

Featured image via the Canary

Stars Mohamed Salah and Lamine Yamal achieved historic milestones in the Champions League during the second leg of the Round of 16. Salah led Liverpool to a stunning comeback, while Yamal continued to break records in a Barcelona shirt.

Liverpool secured a resounding 4-0 victory over Galatasaray, overturning their 1-0 first-leg deficit and advancing to the quarter finals with a 4-1 aggregate score.

Salah achieved an exceptional feat, becoming the first African player to reach 50 goals in the competition’s history. Despite a shaky first half in which he missed a penalty and a clear-cut chance, he roared back in the second half, scoring one goal and providing two assists, leading his team to a decisive victory.

Salah joined by Yamal

In another match, Barcelona secured a resounding 7-2 victory over Newcastle United, a match that saw Lamine Djamel etch his name in the competition’s history books.

The young Spanish star set a new record, becoming the youngest player to reach 10 Champions League goals at 18 years and 248 days old, surpassing the previous record held by Kylian Mbappé (18 years and 350 days).

Between Salah’s dazzling experience and Gamal’s rapid rise, the tournament continues to deliver exceptional nights where records are made and major details are decided.

Featured image via the Canary

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