Paul Dacre, the former editor of the Daily Mail, has reportedly been asked by the Prime Minister to chair the broadcasting regulator Ofcom.

This is the same Paul Dacre who, when put in charge of the Press Complaints Commission, Boris Johnson comparedto ‘putting the Boston Strangler in charge of the code of practice for door-to-door salesmen’.

The same Paul Dacre who, when Boris Johnson was elected Tory leader, said that ‘the party of family values has chosen as leader a man of whom to say he has the morals of an alley cat would be to libel the feline species’.

To Mr Steerpike, this doesn’t seem like the best start to a working relationship. Dacre is expected to take over from Lord Burns at the press regulator, after he was wooed by the Prime Minister over drinks in Downing Street in February, according to The Times.

Writing for this magazine, Mr Dacre once joked about being asked to lead the BBC as its chairman – now rumoured to go to Spectator columnist Charles Moore – asking, ‘why do such positions never go to people from the right?’

The former editor reportedly wants to crack down on BBC bias, having previously writtenhere that the BBC’s negativity about the press may leave them to find ‘the political class comes for you next’, claiming that ‘one of the main reasons Britain voted Brexit was the refusal by our ruling class, led by the BBC, to allow a mature debate on mass immigration’

Perhaps Mr Dacre feels more positive about the future of the right in the broadcasting press, now that he will be regulating it.