Andrew Neil has criticised the Barclay Brothers, the banking world and the British government for leaving the Spectator high and dry as its takeover by a United Arab Emirates-backed investment firm looks more likely.
Speaking on BBC Newsnight on Thursday evening, Neil was adamant that no government should own media companies in countries with a free press. He said the UAE was ill-suited to such ownership given that it is not a democracy.
Neil told Victoria Derbyshire: “Well, my main concern is that the people bankrolling this are the UAE, United Arab Emirates. They’re a government. And the idea that government should own newspapers and magazines in Britain, I think, is absurd.”
“They’re not just a government, they’re an undemocratic government,” he said. “They’re a dictatorship. The UAE is a terribly successful place. I’ve done business there, but it’s not a democratic government. We’re a democracy. Our publications are part of the democratic process. How could we be owned by an undemocratic government?”
Both the Spectator and the Telegraph are being sold by the Barclay Brothers who got themselves into serious financial difficulties.
When questioned on the guarantees from RedBird IMI, the US investment firm that paid £1 billion last year to take over both titles, that there would be editorial independence, Neil said this would not be the case.
“Well, he who pays the piper gets to choose the tune and the people paying the piper here is the UAE. They’ve supplied 75 per cent of the funds for this deal to go ahead. So the idea that they are just going to shell out hundreds of millions of pounds and then just disappear, I think is for the birds, that’s not going to happen.”
Neil also cast doubt on the qualifications of Jeff Zucker, the ex-CNN broadcast executive who is the public face of RedBird IMI: “I’ve met him. He’s a genial chap. He’s a very impressive broadcasting executive. That’s his background. He ran NBC, a big American network. He knows nothing about Britain. He knows nothing about print. He knows nothing about newspapers, and he knows nothing about magazines.”
Neil added: “He’s never worked in newspapers and he doesn’t know about magazines and he doesn’t know about the particular history of The Spectator. I don’t think he’d ever heard of The Spectator until they bid for it, which makes it what it’s been and why it’s lasted for 200 years. So the idea that these two vital vehicles of mainstream centre-right thought should be owned by Arab money and controlled out of New York by a left-wing Democrat, beggars belief.”
Last year, the government ordered Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to investigate whether the sale of the Spectator and the Telegraph titles to a majority-owned UAE fund would breach media regulations. The conclusions of the report are due today and the government’s decision will follow.
Derbyshire later pressed the Spectator chairman on what seemed like a contradiction on his part. She asked: “But isn’t this [takeover] capitalism? This is free trade: you support that, your magazine supports that. This is Global Britain, isn’t it?”
Neil responded: “The Spectator believes in the market economy. And as someone who studied economics at the university of Adam Smith (Glasgow), I can tell you that all market economies have to be regulated and there are regulations in place. And in other countries there are regulations in place in France, for example, that would stop foreign governments from owning major media assets.”
Neil said the deal sets a worrying precedent for the decline of a free press in Britain: “Let me just ask you this: if this was allowed to go ahead and the UAE is allowed to own the Telegraph and The Spectator, how long before some Chinese billionaire, acting on behalf of President Xi, tries to buy the Times when Rupert Murdoch goes to the great newsroom in the sky? Or the Daily Mirror? President Putin, his people might try to buy it. You want the British media to be owned by foreign dictators.”
Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life
