Reach, the renamed Trinity Mirror group, which owns the Express is holding a “brand review” of the Express conducted by a consulting company. Express employees have been interviewed in pairs about their views on the paper and website. On a few occasions the Joint interviewer announced himself as a North London Guardian reader.

In a lot of the consultations employees were asked about the famous Crusader symbol and whether it should go. It’s not been a secret that the woke management of Reach hate the symbol almost as much as they hate the politics of the Express. It is an old management trick to get consultants in to blame for recommending a change you wanted to make anyway. It appears the Crusader could be axed after 92 years from the masthead…

This is part of a culture war in Reach and a war of attrition on the Express internally since it was bought up after the then Trinity Mirror assured then culture secretary Matt Hancock that they would not interfere in the politics of the Express.

So far they have launched a Guardian style green editorial campaign, quite a change in tone from the paper that started the mainstreaming of Brexit. According to an internal source they “initially stopped us from attacking BLM protests and statues being pulled down. Although after about a month we were allowed to.”

A senior figure tried to stop an Express online poll being published which showed about 80% of Express readers supported Trump. They have softened the line on immigration and apologised to Muslim campaign groups for some headlines. Then there was the campaign to raise income tax by 1p…

Guido’s disgruntled source says

“The chief executive Jim Mullen sends round a weekly newsletter telling us how we need to support issues like BLM. He always praises the Mirror and Star but always ignores the Express unless we have done something very woke. 

Mullen wrote during the BLM protests: “I’m hugely proud of the part our publications (and every single one of you) play in not only highlighting injustice and holding those in power to account, but also in celebrating our differences as well as our common humanity. Thank you to our teams for serving our communities by bringing them the news they want and need to hear about, and making it known that we stand with those speaking up and fighting injustice. Black lives matter and saying it matters.”

After this message the Express changed their editorial line on BLM to be nearly the same as the Mirror’s line. There’s also a feeling that when jobs were merged they always chose the Mirror person and made the Express ones redundant. Looks like the hetero-normative Christian Crusader’s days are numbered…