It’s the wrong structure for an institution of this importance, and it’s got the wrong people on it. If you think that’s harsh, just look at their record.They grossly misjudged the threat during the Campbell assault last year. They completely mishandled the resignation of their chairman, Gavyn Davies, and then the chief executive, Greg Dyke, after the Hutton report. And now we’re supposed to look to them to manage the desperate twin problems of picking a successor to Dyke and negotiating a renewal of the Royal Charter. If they have coped so badly during the crisis so far, what on earth makes one believe that they will cope under the continuing pressure of the coming months?This is not to denigrate them as individuals, nor to blame them wholly for the dire straits in which the BBC now finds itself.

The truth is that Gavyn Davies led them badly, first by his rush to judgement in defending so wholeheartedly the Gilligan broadcast and then by tendering his resignation on the day of Hutton and before the governors met the following day. It was done no doubt for the noblest of reasons, but it left the board rudderless at its most crucial point.Nonetheless, when the board did meet, it was a day later, against a quite different background than the panic with which it first greeted Hutton. The newspapers, and public opinion had swung dramatically to the view that Hutton had been too one-sided. The governors were in a position to stand firm and insist that they gave a measured response to Hutton in due course.

Instead they went all over the place, dithered over the future of Greg Dyke, accepted his offer of resignation in the worst possible way, angering him, upsetting the BBC staff and making the Corporation look like a frightened minor-league football club incapable of getting a grip of the situation.Looking at the list of governors, it’s not hard to see why. The 11 appointees are no doubt good and stalwart members of society. But they have been picked not for their understanding of the business or their ability to act in a crisis, but as representatives of various interests. The acting chairman is there because he was proposed by the Tories as a reward for a long and discreet service as a Chief Whip. Dame Pauline Neville Jones is the Foreign Office candidate, as a consolation prize for not getting one of the top jobs in the FO.There are three governors representing Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, a token arts person in Deborah Bull, an economist, a law lecturer and a figure from the world of charities.