In the old days at Biased BBC we used to laugh whenever anyone from the Left would counter our daily charges of left-wing BBC bias by citing three names - Jeremy Clarkson, Andrew Neil and Nick Robinson. It seemed to be their main argument.
They've got rather more sophisticated these days (with mentions of Craig Oliver, for example, and Cardiff University reports) but their 'counter-evidence' (on blogs, newspaper comments fields and Twitter) still often boils down to repeating "Jeremy Clarkson, Andrew Neil and Nick Robinson". They think it's their trump card.
I was thinking about that again because I was just watching Andrew Neil interviewing Conservative minister Sajid Javid on The Sunday Politics. Andrew going at Mr Javid with Tom Watson-like terrier intensity. It was a classic case of 'interviewing 'from the Left', and a superb piece of interviewing. Yet Andrew Neil isn't 'of the Left'. He's just doing what a professional BBC interviewer is supposed to do, without fear or favour.
It has to be said though that being held up as the absolute model of impartial BBC interviewing by blogs which non-right-wingers (like Owen Bennett Jones) tend to see as heavily right-wing (and biased), probably won't help Andrew Neil fend off the charge that me must be biased because he's known to hold right-wing views.
All I can say is that his body of work speaks for itself. He may have strong views but he knows his role is to play devil's advocate when interviewing people he agrees with. Moreover, in the days when I counted interruptions, Andrew Neil's results showed that he was (on average) tougher with Conservatives than with Labour politicians. Right-wing bias was something he didn't display.
Therefore, he is the model of impartial BBC interviewing. QED.
