One of my favourite political maxims is that you should never ‘make the perfect the enemy of the good’.  For many years the Conservative Party did just that; arguing in favour of an ultimate ambition not shared by the majority of people and so preventing that ambition from being achieved - the party it seemed was incapable of taking baby steps, winning the war by winning smaller battles over time. 

Today though with the proposal that the BBC licence fee should be ’shared’ with other broadcasters we see the Conservative Party heeding the maxim and ensuring that the perfect is far from the the enemy of the good.

It’s no secret that the bulk of the Conservative Party is opposed to the licence fee.  After all it’s anti free market and accordingly offends the most basic of conservative economic principles.  Of course the desire to see the end of the licence fee and the achievement of the end of the licence fee are two completely different things.  The latter is not something that chimes with the public (if it did the fee would have been removed long ago) and accordingly an end to the licence fee cannot be achieved in one go.  The end can come however through an incremental process and today we have seen the first step in that process being taken. 

By proposing such a fundamental change in the way the licence fee works the Conservative Party has ignited the debate over the very nature of the licence fee and its legitimacy.  The proposal itself is relatively innocuous; after all what can possibly be wrong with sharing?  But it goes to the heart of how broadcasting works in this country.  And with it the Conservative Party has set in motion a chain of events that ultimately leads to an end of the licence fee.