The New European is looking to bolster its editorial output, as yesterday they announced that Matthew d’Ancona would be joining the paper as editor-at-large, alongside Alastair Campbell. Bad Al’s puff pieces on Championship football club Burnley, renowned for their ‘Brexit ball‘ image, clearly aren’t cutting it with the New European readership – as d’Ancona will provide a new weekly column and podcast output. All this change seems to be too much for employees to keep up with, neither of the New European staff Guido spoke to were any the wiser on d’Ancona’s appointment. He starts next week.
The new editor-at-large will have quite the challenge on his hands boosting revenue. As of the last set of financial statements, their profit and loss account registered net negative outflows of £617,452 – that amounts to over £50,000 per month. Word has it that the financial situation has not improved this year. During their previous investment drive they promised to become profitable, as Guido predicted the New European continues to be a loss-making publication, alongside all the other soft-left vanity publications; Prospect, Tortoise, Byline Times and New Statesman. Guido has noticed the weekly paper is being distributed free of charge in office lobbies – literally giving it away – the paper is so desperate for revenue they’ve taken to flogging merchandise…
Most left-of-centre broadsheets like to have a tame, ‘nice’ Tory, who understands the party and can translate the Tory tribes for readers who have never kissed a Tory and think they all go to their country estates for fox hunting on the weekends. Mark Wallace does an excellent job of explaining, not campaigning, in his columns. Guido usually checks out Matthew d’Ancona’s Guardian column to see how he explains the exotic Conservative carnivores to the quinoa-eating classes. The former editor of the Spectator is a better read than most Guardianista keyboard culture warriors…
His column this morning concludes:
“Brexit was designed by its most passionate supporters to fail: its purpose was to be betrayed, to enable a new movement to rise up, animated by fury and fear. Such a movement has now been born. It is already tearing the Conservative party to pieces. That, sad to say, is only the beginning of its plan.”
That is a failure of analysis amounting to myth making of his own. After the referendum, Vote Leave wound up, Dominic Cummings went to ground, Nigel Farage was happily cashing in on a media career, Matthew Elliott was off to the corporate world. No one was planning a new movement. They were demob happy and disengaging from frontline politics.
Kidding Guardian readers that Brexiteers would fight for decades as a means to build a movement when the promised Brexitland failed to be delivered just does not make any sense. If he had argued that the failure to deliver would spark a backlash movement, that would be unarguable, to claim that Brexit was designed as a means to build a movement is tosh. It is because this Parliament of Remainers has screwed up that only now a movement is rising. If Parliament even at this late hour somehow voted for a meaningful Brexit, the backlash movement would be stillborn…
No shortage of internal BBC candidates throwing their hats into the ring to be the next Newsnight editor, though there is a new name doing the rounds among Beeb insiders this week – Guardian columnist Matthew d’Ancona. Guido hears d’Ancona has been advising Sarah Sands on the Today programme in addition to his weekly segment, he is a staunch defender of Auntie and has editorship experience at the Speccie. He is the acceptable face of liberal, centre-right journalism for Guardianistas so it could make sense. They’ve hired from the Guardian before…
Guido hears the Cameroon venerable bede Matthew D’Ancona is off to the Guardian, after the Sunday Telegraph‘s somewhat bizarre decision to wield the axe.
Islington based d’Ancona will fit right in.
Congratulations…
