What just happened ?

There's a couple of possible explanations for today's apocalyptic lead in The Sunday Times, headlined "No 10 tells the BBC the licence fee will be scrapped".

The first, and my favourite, is that political editor Tim Shipman went for a Friday night relaxer with  "senior aides to the Prime Minister","senior source", "source" and "No 10 source" (not sure how many of them are the same person), and someone found an old bottle of TaxPayers' Alliance artisan gin that was iffy. Others were drinking IEA Old Tosh craft ale with frankly too much sediment, and the evening finished with past-their-sell-by-date shots of Freedom Association Jagermeister.

The second is that we're seeing a tactic applied previously by John Whittingdale - muse in public on a terrifying end game for the BBC, in the hope that your eventual almost-as-bad outcome is seen by voters as common-sense, caring Conservatism.

The Sunday Times is paywalled, but I'm sure a Murdoch-owned newspaper currently setting up a rival to Radio 4 won't mind me sharing the bullet-points of the No 10 'blueprint'.

● Scrap the licence fee and replace it with a subscription model

● Force the BBC to sell off the vast majority of its 61 radio stations but safeguard Radio 3 and Radio 4

● Reduce the number of the corporation’s national television channels from its current 10

● Scale back the BBC website

● Invest more in the World Service

● Ban BBC stars from cashing in with lucrative second jobs.