George Osborne

Why the fuss over The Spectator’s sale?

issue 30 March 2024

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. They found willing allies among politicians whose pyjama parties had not led to the support from the Murdoch press they’d expected. I am as a rule very sceptical of people who see Establishment stitch-ups round every corner. But all these years later I still feel angry that it was my friend Andy Coulson who was singled out as the scapegoat and sent to Belmarsh – while the politicians and the proprietors never stopped schmoozing each other.

I did my fair share of that. Once I flew with David Cameron to the island of Brecqhou. There, on a dramatic rocky outcrop in the English Channel, the owners of the Daily Telegraph had built themselves an extraordinary new castle. When we landed we were met by separate golf buggies for a tour, one driven by Frederick Barclay and the other by his identical twin David.

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