The attack on Jess Brammar feels like both a witch hunt and a warning – maybe that was the point all along

The most remarkable thing about the outrage following Jess Brammar’s application for a job at the BBC is that Jess Brammar is largely unremarkable. I do not mean this as an insult; she is a talented senior journalist with a long and distinguished career both online and in broadcast. She is not special because the opinions she has been crucified for are entirely banal.

She tweeted about finding Brexit tedious, which everyone who covered it surely thought at one point or another. She posted in support of Black Lives Matter and transgender people, something that both Labour and Conservative MPs have done before.

She accused Boris Johnson of occasionally being economical with the truth, a fact that his supporters often play down but never deny. That is, as far as I can tell, pretty much it. Because of these opinions, she has now been vilified by most Conservative-leaning outlets for several weeks.

It has been both relentless and unnervingly personal; a website not worth naming even combed through the books she had bought for her young son, looking for proof that she should not be hired.

This right-wing wrath hasn’t just come from the usual headbangers either; I have spoken to some comparatively moderate Conservatives recently who would rather she did not get the job. The whole affair has been deeply concerning – and indicative of broader issues in the political sphere.

The first one is the most straightforward: there are many jobs which require people to be impartial, but which never demanded of people to never have had a public opinion in their lives. Off the top of my head, I can think of several Labour and Conservative staffers who later became civil servants or political reporters. Similarly, there are countless journalists who now work at the BBC but weren’t always there.

You can argue that it is not an ideal state of affairs, but it is arguably the best one available. How else should these places recruit? Should the BBC and the civil service snatch newborns from their cribs, forbidding them from forming opinionated thoughts until they retire?

This line of thought is worrying because it is unsustainable, but also because it can only come from a state of deep paranoia. The idea that anyone on this planet is entirely free of biases is nonsensical; as such, believing that people can be impartial in their work means that we are willing to trust them.

That trust may not be instinctive but if it goes away, what are we left with? This feels especially relevant at a time when culture wars are being waged on all fronts. Brammar is hardly a Marxist radical; instead, vague and small clues are being used as evidence that she has picked a side, and picked the wrong one. How can democratic institutions thrive if there are only ever us and them? And perhaps more importantly, what does it say about the Conservatives among the establishment that they do not believe their side could withstand coverage from anyone but their own? What clothes is the emperor wearing if so few can be trusted to witness them?

It also seems worth wondering if the issue is at least partially structural. The Conservative Party has been in power for over a decade; because Westminster tends to have a short attention span, they may well have been in government for a lifetime.

A journalist intending to hold power to account will have spent most of those 11 years pointing to the Conservatives’ failings, because they are running the country and the Labour Party is not. It is an achingly obvious point to make, I know, but somehow it does not get made enough. Though scrutinising the opposition is one thing, it will only ever be a secondary concern, especially when a general election is not around the corner.

Of course, any sane politician or politically-involved person should know this. If they ignore it, they must be idiots, acting in bad faith or – worst of all – idiots acting in bad faith. In any case, the endgame remains the same; anyone who has held a vaguely liberal opinion at any point in their life will now think twice before applying for a reasonably high-profile BBC job.

A cynic could even argue that this was the goal all along; that what is happening now is both a witch hunt and a warning. This is why I felt comfortable writing this despite being friends with Jess Brammar – though it has got horrendously personal at times, this row increasingly feels like it has little to do with her.

Still, the people driving this particular media storm should be careful what they wish for. If they are setting out to create a political arena that is even more distrustful and vindictive than it is already, what will happen when the wind changes?