IF wokery is the official new religion of the British state, then the BBC is its priesthood and Broadcasting House its central cathedral.

Propped up by the vast revenues from the licence fee, which in 2022 brought in £3.8billion, the bloated corporation relentlessly peddles the fashionable gospel of equality and social inclusion.

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From drama to sport, no part of its output is free from the influence of political correctness.

Yet at the heart of this ideological obsession with diversity there are two glaring hypocrisies.

The first is the grossly unrepresentative nature of the BBC’s top ranks, which are filled with the affluent products of private education.

The gilded elite in the higher echelons of the corporation is anything but diverse, as was highlighted this week by the publication of new BBC pay statistics.

These revealed that of all the staff earning more than £150,000 a year, no less than 22 per cent of them went to private schools.

That figure is three times higher than in the overall population, where just seven per cent enjoyed such a privilege.

But this good fortune has not reduced the BBC’s capacity for sanctimonious finger-wagging.

And that preachy culture brings us to the second outrageous double standard.

The BBC might like to prattle constantly about the need for diversity.

But across its sprawling empire there is little room for any diversity of opinion.

On the contrary, an atmosphere of groupthink prevails, where programming is treated as a tool of indoctrination and staff training is used to root out heresies.

Douglas Jay, who after the Second World War helped the Labour government implement its radical programme, had written in an earlier book “the man in Whitehall knows best”.

Today that condescending attitude can be found within the BBC.

Without any mandate from the public, the corporation thinks it has the right to instruct viewers and listeners in the woke creed.

Understandably, many licence payers, who fund this racket, are becoming fed up at being patronised.

That is particularly true of working class and low income households, who increasingly feel excluded despite the Beeb’s rhetoric about inclusion.

That truth was highlighted by a report just out from the media regulator Ofcom, which had found that only 55 per cent of people in those social categories thought the BBC’s output was any good.

The mood of alienation was reinforced by complaints in the Ofcom survey about the BBC’s eagerness to deploy “extreme stereotypes” such as drug addicts and welfare spongers.

With some justification, the poorer viewers in the survey felt that the BBC is run by an “exclusive upper-class” group who earn too much.

It is doubtful if Ofcom’s study will make any difference, for the noxious woke dogma now runs through the veins of the BBC, poisoning so much of what the broadcaster does.

Toxic culture

A central reason for this toxic culture lies precisely in the privileged backgrounds of the cadre of senior BBC figures, partly because they were brought up with the belief that they were born to rule and partly because their awareness of their advantages makes them desperate to signal their virtue.

As a result, they over-compensate as they seek to prove they can engage with youth, tackle oppression, embrace other cultures or challenge Britain’s heritage.

But rather than producing high-quality programmes, this highly politicised approach is snuffing out creativity, originality and integrity.

So many shows have become nothing more than exercises in identity politics.

That applies to the Sports Personality Of The Year where, ludicrously, Ronnie O’Sullivan was left off the shortlist despite becoming the oldest ever winner of the UK Championship at 47, adding to his achievement of being the youngest ever winner at 17.

So much comedy is now just routine bashing of Brexit, the tabloid Press or Britain’s past.

Even the flagship science fiction show Doctor Who has become a vehicle for right-on brainwashing, just as the long-running soap Waterloo Road recently had a storyline where students rebelled against their school’s links to the slave trade.

One girl was depicted scrawling the word “racist” across a plaque of the school’s founder, while others hurled red paint at the walls to symbolise the blood of slaves.

From wails about “Tory cuts” to sob stories from illegal migrants, the left-wing bias of BBC news is clear.

Nor can youngsters escape.

The BBC’s Children’s website recently carried a feature on “White Privilege”, a highly divisive and contested theory which the Beeb defined as “people with white skin having advantages in society that other people do not have”.

Among the contributors was Kehinde Andrews, professor of black studies at Birmingham City University.

He once claimed that Britain was worse than the Nazis during the Second World War and his latest book is entitled The Psychosis Of Whiteness.

One educational video promoted by the BBC had to be withdrawn after an outcry over its content, which included the grotesquely unscientific claim that “there are over 100, if not more, gender identities”.

Commenting on training sessions given to BBC staff by trans activists, an employee said “there is a tight-knit cabal at the top of BBC news who give tacit approval to gender ideology”.

At times it seems like the BBC is trying to radicalise the public.

The barrage of woke propaganda is relentless, even at Christmas.

BBC One this week had an Agatha Christie whodunit called Murder Is Easy that had been re-written by the Beeb’s political commissars to incorporate a saintly sleuth from Nigeria, an English village awash with racism and a strident lecture about the sins of colonialism.

There will be more of this to come soon, judging by the winners of the BBC 2022/23 Drama Room writers’ programme, which aims to promote new talent.

One participant, claiming to be “addicted to social justice”, said she wants “to indoctrinate many unsuspecting viewers with her militant woke agenda”.

She has certainly gone to the right organisation.

While the public despairs, the posh executives will be cheering her on.

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