Mr Alastair Campbell and his friend, Mr Tony Blair, have succeeded where Mrs Thatcher failed. They have sub-jugated the BBC and undermined its confidence in itself as a public broadcasting institution. Following the publication on Wednesday of the Hutton Report into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the BBC's two most senior executives have departed.
The journalist at the centre of the whole controversy, Mr Andrew Gilligan, also resigned last night.
The issues are not as "simple" as the British Prime Minister anxiously claims. His reputation and that of his former communications chief are of little consequence when considered alongside the deaths of Iraqi civilians, British servicemen poorly equipped for war, their families and the destabilisation of the Middle East.
Trust in the credibility and fairness of news, analysis and commentary are essential components of any democratic society. These values have taken a severe battering this week in the UK following publication of the Hutton Report. Lord Hutton was rightly critical of the BBC's standards of reporting and its editing procedures. But, his exoneration of Mr Blair, Mr Campbell and his Defence Secretary, Mr Hoon, of exaggerating evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, or of leaking Dr Kelly's name as the source of the BBC report, are at variance with much of the widely-publicised evidence in the inquiry.
British opinion polls yesterday suggest that the BBC has been blamed disproportionately in the whole sorry controversy and that the public should beware of political triumphalism in the face of such a humiliation. One poll found three times as many people trust the BBC rather than the British government to tell the truth, despite the Hutton findings.
Restoring the BBC's reputation for fair and balanced reporting and protecting it from political pressure should be a major priority for those who take over from Mr Gavyn Davies and Mr Greg Dyke - and for all the BBC's 3,500 news staff and broadcasters who acknowledge the real mistakes made. Their success in doing so will be followed closely by journalists and the public in Ireland.
The combination of Lord Hutton's narrowly-based exoneration of Mr Blair and the vindictive zeal with which Mr Campbell pursued the BBC after it was published is worrying for independent journalism. The BBC is in crisis. This is a time for the public broadcaster to remember that, warts and all, it is a public institution with a better standing than Mr Blair's government. The world would be poorer if the corporation was to become a casualty of this affair as its charter comes up for renewal and possible deregulation. The BBC deserves to recover from a damaging week, not least to report on why no weapons of mass destruction have yet been found in Iraq - the reason why Mr Blair went to war. The British Prime Minister has yet to acknowledge that war was waged and people died under false pretences.