Why the fuss over The Spectator’s sale?

This diary is late. Two months late. The columnists who missed my Evening Standard deadlines often had elaborate excuses. Mine is that I’ve been involved in working out who is going to own this magazine. We’ve seen some oddities in this particular drama. Those vehemently opposed to government interference in a free press suddenly calling for government laws to regulate press ownership. Columns from advocates of free trade and open investment in every industry except, it turns out, their own. I don’t doubt some are motivated solely by high principles; but it’s worth asking the question of others: do their high principles happen to accord with their view of who in practice they’d like to see own The Spectator and the Telegraph?

I saw something similar when Rupert Murdoch tried to buy all of Sky over a decade ago. The injury felt by the victims of phone-hacking was genuine – indeed, I was one of them; but the way the issue was exploited by rival newspaper groups and broadcasters was not.