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Despite the Conservatives’ defeat in the recent general election, the right-wing media in Britain appears to be thriving – judging by the eye-watering price for which the weekly right-wing magazine The Spectator has just been sold.
The Spectator was founded in 1828 and has published continuously since then – making it the world’s oldest surviving magazine. It has always been considered the “house journal” of the Conservative Party, with its editorship often used as a stepping stone to political prominence (most recently by Boris Johnson).
But that may be about to change. The magazine has just been sold to UK hedge-fund investor Sir Paul Marshall for £100 million. This is a staggering sum for a publication that, in 2023, turned a profit of just £2.6 million.
The purchase makes Marshall one of the most influential media magnates in the UK, potentially second only to Rupert Murdoch. So what does his purchase of the Spectator mean for the right-wing press? And indeed, for the Conservatives, to whom he has donated more than half a million pounds.
In 2017, after a successful career in the City of London, Marshall purchased the right-wing news and opinion website UnHerd.
But it was the role he played in the launch of Britain’s first politically opinionated news channel – GB News – that brought him to real prominence on the British media scene’s right flank.
The channel first started broadcasting in 2021 but was soon in financial trouble. Marshall, who owned 38% of the company, stepped in. By injecting a total of £40 million into the channel, he enabled it to keep going and expand its influence.
As I have found in my research into the media company, its relatively low viewing figures are not an accurate depiction of its impact. GB News reaches a vast audience through its website and social media presence (2.7 million viewers to its website per month, and 1.3 million YouTube subscribers).
The channel has courted controversy since launch, primarily by its use of Conservative and other right-wing politicians as presenters. It has often featured Tory MPs as presenters interviewing Tory ministers. It has been repeatedly investigated by Britain’s media regulator, Ofcom, and has been found in breach of its impartiality rules twelve times.
Read more: Ofcom has rules on broadcaster impartiality – so why is GB News getting away with breaking them?
Marshall has also had his eyes on an even more important player in Britain’s right-wing media ecology. The Daily Telegraph and its sister paper the Sunday Telegraph have been regarded as the Conservatives’ flagship serious newspapers ever since the daily began publication in 1855.
The papers are up for open auction after a previous bid by Abu Dhabi-backed consortium Redbird IMI to take over both the Spectator and Telegraph collapsed. The purchase was largely funded by United Arab Emirates vice-president Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, who also owns Manchester City Football Club, and the government intervened to introduce legislation banning foreign governments from owning UK media.
Marshall’s rightward move
Marshall has given assurances about guaranteeing non-interference in the Spectator’s editorial and political line.
But Conservatives would be mistaken if they thought the expansion of Marshall’s media empire was unmitigated good news. His evolution from Liberal Democrat activist to GB News backer gives an indication as to where the Spectator could go under his ownership. In 2004, Marshall co-edited The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism, which sought to turn his party from the centre-left of British politics towards the centre, or even centre-right.
As the Brexit referendum came into view, Marshall left the Lib Dems to campaign for, and fund, the Leave campaign. From that point on Marshall gave significantly to the Conservative party.
At the start of 2024, anti-racist organisation Hope Not Hate uncovered evidence that Marshall had “liked” Islamophobic and anti-migrant social media content. A spokesperson for Marshall said this engagement did not represent his views.
The direction of his media companies has followed this rightward shift. Under Marshall’s ownership, GB News has become virtually the mouthpiece for the right-wing, pro-Brexit Reform UK party.
Party leader Nigel Farage has an hour-long prime time slot Monday to Thursday, netting him, almost a million pounds a year. Farage says this figure is exaggerated, but by his own financial declarations he is the highest paid of all MPs.
Apart from the string of Reform politicians being given airtime, my recent research has revealed how GB News shifted during the recent election campaign from being pro-Tory to pro-Reform.
I monitored the content posted to the GB News website in the months ahead of the election. My analysis found that as the election drew nearer, the share of pro-Tory items declined from 25% to less than half of that.
But in the last week of June, following Farage’s announcement that he was running as a Reform candidate, the number of pro-Reform items consisted of 17% of its coverage (compared with just 7% over the previous three months). Anti-Conservative coverage was up to 10%, level-pegging with Labour.
What then, of the Spectator’s future trajectory? Perhaps one straw in the wind is that, despite Marshall’s assurances that the magazine’s editorial line would remain untouched, Andrew Neil, who chaired the magazine for 20 years and kept it as a Conservative-supporting publication, stepped down following Marshall’s purchase.
He tweeted: “I regarded it as my prime responsibility for 20 years to ensure [editorial independence] not just from outside pressures, commercial or political, but even from proprietors … I cannot tell if the new owners will have the same reverence for editorial independence.”
Neil’s replacement, Freddie Sayers, has been editing UnHerd, where the political line, while generally right-of-centre, has not been consistently pro-Conservative.
Hence, there is the possibility that, if Marshall is successful in his bid for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, the right-wing bias of the UK’s print media will remain, but not necessarily to the benefit for the currently flailing Conservative Party.
Ivor Gaber does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
