The BBC wins again. In the Christmas ratings war, the BBC trounced the competition as it always does. A pointless silly-season contest, but it's a national reminder that Britain's good broadcasting comes thanks to Lord Reith's legacy.

Some dud programmes are the necessary price of any risk-taking creative endeavour, but well outweighed by three glorious hours of Great Expectations. Only the Grinch wouldn't have found something on the BBC to please. Was it good enough? Of course not, because there is no "good enough": it can always do better.

Never forget that in 2011 Britain's broadcasting culture was only saved by a whisker. Days before Jeremy Hunt was about to hand the Murdochs complete control of BSkyB, the Guardian's revelations about phone-hacking stopped that in its tracks. Labour feared and fawned on Murdoch, but his influence reached its zenith when his own man, Andy Coulson, secured a place right in the heart of Cameron's Downing Street.

Gaining monopolistic control of Sky was only step one: next was abolition of impartiality laws for broadcasters. Fox News was on its way here, destined to poison the UK as it has US politics. Murdoch-friendly commentators were already softening up opinion, claiming Britain's fuddy-duddy neutral news was outdated in the age of the shouty internet. Dominating the press is not enough, the right would control broadcasting too. Cameron was up for it.

Until the journalist Nick Davies and the MP Tom Watson saved the day, Murdoch and Tory attacks on the BBC were getting louder. Many Tory ministers regard the success of the BBC, like the NHS, as an affront to all they believe, a denial and a "crowding out" of markets. In Osborne's comprehensive spending review, the BBC suffered a serious 16% cut. Although the licence fee has nothing whatever to do with national debt, the general cuts were an excuse to freeze it again until 2017, when the BBC charter comes up for renewal. Iain Duncan Smith and William Hague were two leading predators: IDS tried to force on to the BBC the £600m the Department for Work and Pensions has to pay for giving free TV licences to the over-75s. (Means-testing would recoup half that sum, but IDS doesn't dare.) Hague succeeded in putting the entire £250m Foreign Office cost of the World Service on to the BBC. Osborne was all for both, saying the BBC's loss would be only one body in the mass grave of his cuts. The BBC fought back, playing them Mitch Benn's brilliant song I'm Proud of the BBC as a warning of the popular campaign it would run if the cuts were truly crippling. Downing Street quailed, and the cuts were reduced to £320m, but the BBC still came away badly maimed.

But here's a tidy sum the BBC could recoup for us all. The Murdoch press has relentlessly lobbied to cut the BBC back to a US-style small subscription service for unprofitable programmes. Now, while Murdoch is weakened, is the chance for the BBC to regain lost ground. Here's the big issue: when Margaret Thatcher helped Murdoch launch Sky with exemptions from EU broadcasting rules, she added another bonus. She made the BBC pay £10m a year to be transmitted on the Sky platform, although across the rest of Europe commercial broadcasters pay public broadcasters for the privilege of using their content. By rights Sky should pay many hundreds of millions. If the BBC withdrew, Sky would totter since BBC channels are by far the most watched by Sky subscribers, yet Sky charges an average £500 per customer, compared with the BBC's £145.50 licence fee –and yet the BBC massively outproduces Sky content. It's time Sky paid full value.

The BBC accounts for much of Britain's success in the creative industries, a prime example of national investment yielding rich returns. Every £1 of the licence fee puts £2 into the economy, in talent trained and nurtured, in independent companies commissioned, its own output rolling through the economy. Exports and sales deliver 20% of the BBC's income: 70m US homes buy BBC channels. But Sky is a net loss to the UK: for every £1 in Sky subscriptions, only 90p stays in the UK, the rest going to the parent company and Hollywood studios. Sky is essentially parasitic, not productive, for Britain.

The BBC, naturally timid, is only demanding not to pay its £10m to Sky. That would buy another 10 hours of Great Expectations-quality drama. Nice, but not enough. Licence payers should be up in arms demanding the full price: the BBC has every right to threaten to withdraw otherwise, since Sky subscribers watch BBC channels most.

Tories of the John Redwood variety continue to seek ways to demolish the BBC, with gut support from many in the cabinet. They claim the licence fee is an anachronism in an internet age. But it doesn't matter on what equipment the BBC is received. Virtually the entire audience watches/listens live on transmission, on whatever piece of machinery: only 0.2% watch later on demand.

Labour should take up this cause: join the demand that Sky pays up, so we can all have more of the best programmes from the BBC. At the same time, support the BBC's demand that Sky stops hiding the excellent BBC children's channels, CBBC and CBeebies – relegated to 13th and 14th on the children's section of Sky's electronic programme guide: channels 1-12 are dominated by ad-driven US cartoon dross.

Labour should be the BBC's most vigorous champion against Murdoch and Tory predators. But that doesn't mean Labour is wrong in its campaign to ensure BBC political coverage is even-handed. Labour's "serious complaint" comes after research showed Labour getting less than half the coverage of the coalition. Having spent years as social affairs editor in the newsroom, I know how nervous the BBC always is, supremely anxious to be fair, but vulnerable to government pressure. The BBC is neither pinko nor Tory-leaning: what drives it most is perpetual anxiety. Audience feedback in the daily duty log is haphazard and minimal, (so do phone in.) For want of any objective measure, an unconscious tendency lets the BBC feel its news agenda must be about right if it matches the serious press, forgetting 80% of newspaper readership is owned by rightwing moguls, many not even UK taxpayers. Labour has to keep tugging on the rope to redress that Tory heft. Yet Labour must be the BBC's champion too, guardian of this national treasure. If ever in doubt, listen to Mitch Benn's song.