To the losers, the spoils

What a predictably bizarre outcome: the Hutton report that cleared the Government and damned the BBC has become a triumph for the corporation and a huge problem for Tony Blair. Lord Hutton's verdict was not what most newspapers expected and wanted, so they have simply rubbished the judgment. Only a few days ago, Lord Hutton was a fine, upstanding judge of impeccable integrity. Now he is another supine crony.

The onslaught against Hutton has had several perverse consequences. Andrew Gilligan is a national hero, the victim of a bullying government. Yet it was his original inaccurate reports that plunged a neurotic government into crisis. Greg Dyke has become an even bigger martyr for standing up for the truth, when it was his failure to do so that was partly responsible for the crisis. The cheers from BBC staff that greeted him as he left his job were reminiscent of scenes from old Eastern European states where the people hailed those who they regarded as their heroic leaders, not realising that it was all a bit more complicated than that.

Parts of the BBC have convinced themselves that their leader has been ousted as a result of political pressure from the Government. What is actually the case is that he was forced out because he defended robustly the reporting of a huge allegation that was wrong. If the BBC story had been right, Andrew Gilligan would have secured the scoop of the century and Mr Dyke would be getting a knighthood from Mr Blair's successor. The BBC is in trouble for getting a story wrong, not for giving the Government a hard time. It feels hard done by, with some wringing their hands in fearful despair, when in reality a few of its managers are lucky to still be in their jobs.

In this strange Alice in Wonderland world, those who raise questions about the BBC risk being accused of taking a soft line with the Government. But by broadcasting an inaccurate story, and leaping to an unswerving defence, it was the BBC that let the Government off the hook. The real story is that the intelligence was wrong and that Tony Blair chose to believe that it was right. This has huge implications for a post-11 September world that depends on accurate intelligence for its security, and for Mr Blair, who went to war on the basis of a threat from Saddam that did not exist. The big raging questions over the last year should have been about the Prime Minister's judgement. Parts of the BBC casually turned it into one about his integrity. Hutton, who had an absurd remit, was never asked to examine the origins of the war. He cannot be blamed for not addressing what he had not been asked to address.

Even now, that much more important debate about the war is being partially obscured. Hutton's verdict has not changed very much at all. Instead, the topsy-turvy Hutton-related rows persist. Some in the BBC pay for adverts in newspapers demanding that their independence be protected - yet no one is challenging it. The BBC's independence has never been stronger than it is this weekend. Look at the trouble the Government is in for demanding a single apology for one inaccurate story, and the even greater problems it faces when an independent judge comes down on its side. It is the supposedly triumphant ministers and Downing Street that are bemused and despondent this weekend. Such is their bewildered gloom that some ministers are beginning to wish that Hutton had attacked them as well as the BBC, although if this had happened most of the media would have focused on that element of the report and demanded resignations galore.

Not that the BBC should get too carried away by some of the current media approval. Anti-war newspapers are temporarily united with the Government-hating press in their dismay over Hutton. Some newspapers that are currently supportive will turn against the BBC again once it has served their purposes of kicking Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell. Similarly the Conservative leadership, so enthusiastic about the independence of the BBC last week, plans far more radical reforms than the Government. Indeed, one of the many twists of this affair is that while ministers are still fuming about parts of the BBC, they remain marginally more sympathetic to the institution than the Conservatives.

I suspect that once the shock of the Hutton verdict has subsided, the more intelligent figures in the BBC will realise that reforms are needed. There will be a backlash against the backlash. Greg Dyke pointed the way in his BBC interview on Friday when he said, rightly, that as Director General he could not edit the Today programme. In other words, he was editor in chief of an organisation too big for him to edit. So who was responsible for the failings of the programme? The editor, Kevin Marsh, seemingly had little to do with the BBC's defence against Downing Street. But those further up the hierarchy who took control were not responsible directly for Today's output either. On Hutton's website there are emails from one BBC manager to another asking how a Today story gets on the air. No newspaper would be run by layers of managers with such ill-defined responsibilities drawing salaries of private-sector scale.

Greg Dyke said he had planned to bring in an outsider to review the management structure. One of the terrible ironies of this affair is that Mr Dyke, a BBC outsider who inspired such enthusiasm in his staff, would have been the ideal figure to lead such a review. His acting successor, Mark Byford, has made a mistake in announcing an internal review: more managers reviewing other managers and probably concluding that even more managers are required to enforce deadly new guidelines. The solution is obvious: the BBC needs fewer managers - and ones who can tell a good story from a bad one.

One of the many other oddities in this saga is that while the BBC was supposedly in crisis, much of its output continued to be superb, including the reporting of its own story. Newsnight was magisterial and entertaining, Five Live was as wonderful as ever, Radio 4 continued to produce its normal range of uniquely stimulating programmes, Radio 3 was its usual calm self and News 24 was an authority in a fast-moving situation. Managerial crises at the BBC are oddly disconnected from what the licence-payers watch and listen to. The BBC can take huge comfort from this last week, but it does raise the question of what its army of managers get up to most of the time.

I almost forgot about the other oddity: Tony Blair survived what the media had billed as the toughest week of his career, in which he might have to resign. But it proved to be so undemanding that this has plunged him in to another crisis about why it was not tougher.