A mixed bag overall for Murdoch’s UK print media empire. The latest accounts for Times Media, publisher of The Times and The Sunday Times, show profits doubled to £73.2 million last year, up from £34 million the year before. They also gained 70,000 digital-only subscribers, bringing their online total to 438,000, or 641,000 including print.
The Sun, meanwhile, more than doubled its pre-tax losses to £127 million in the same period – thanks largely to the £99.8m set aside for “damages and claimant’s legal expenses relating to phone hacking” and “future costs“. Revenues rose slightly from £318.6 million to £320.5 million following growth in their online business.
Today marks three years since Keir Starmer won the Labour leadership, and the Times has published new YouGov polling to reflect how the public think he’s doing. The good news is more voters now think he’s changed the party for the better in the last 18 months, going from 20% to 33%. The bad news is nearly half still don’t know what he stands for, with 47% saying he’s done a bad job of setting out a vision since becoming Labour leader.
The latter figure is an improvement on September 2021 data – when 60% said he had not laid out a clear agenda – possibly because he changes his agenda to whatever polls better. The dilemma facing swing voters after 3 years is they don’t really know what Keir really believes, whether it is nationalisation or trans identity issues. Whilst 22% public said Starmer had been “a great or a good leader of Labour”, that’s less than the 28% who say he’d been “poor or terrible“. 41% also felt he had “not made any real difference” to the party since taking over…
Starmer himself tells the Times he will be “completely ruthless” in his pursuit of power, and that has required making some tough calls, like having to “take a decision” on Corbyn. A decision which involved pretending he’d “never” called Jeremy a friend…
Hancock faced an uphill struggle of a media round this morning, having to explain the new law announced last night that social gatherings cannot exceed six people, while also defending the government’s ability to break international law following yesterday’s furore. TimesRadio’s Stig Abell combined both stories in one question…
The social gathering rules, announced last night, will ban gatherings of more than six people in England from Monday – down from the current 30. The rule applies to all spaces indoors and outdoors, public and private; with schools, workplaces, funerals, weddings and Covid-secure sport teams exempt from the rule. To add confusion, if your household “support” bubble is greater than six, you’re also exempt.
On the second part of TimesRadio’s question to the health secretary, expect the much hyped Internal Markets bill to be published in a few hours.
Remainers and The Times are loving the “Airbus prepares to move business from Britain” story this morning. Couple of things here. The Times claims in its top line:
“The European aerospace company Airbus is set to become the first big manufacturer to pull investment from Britain after losing patience with Theresa May’s stalled Brexit negotiations.”
“Set to” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Read down and you see Airbus is only threatening to “pull investment” if there is no deal. Incidentally, The Times calls no deal “hard Brexit” – Guido remembers when they used to say “hard Brexit” was leaving the single market and customs union. When you think that privately Number 10 does not countenance the possibility of no deal, that the government has done next to no preparations for such an outcome, and that the PM’s “no deal is better than a bad deal” rhetoric is empty, it is clearly far more likely there will be a deal. So Airbus is not “set to” pull out by any objective measure.
Also worth remembering Airbus was a chief player in Project Fear during the referendum. They made intervention after intervention threatening to pull investment if the country voted to Leave. Since then, Airbus boss Tom Enders admitted that the company plans to retain its operations “long into the future’’. It’s pretty obvious that Airbus and the overwritten story in the Times are just trying to make sure no deal is well and truly off the table. Which it effectively already is thanks to Number 10. This is Project Fear 2.0 from big business and a Remoan comic…
The Times’ defence editor Deborah Haynes has won the hotly contested race to be Sky News’ new foreign affairs editor. Congratulations…
A brave intervention from ‘Cabinet allies’ of Amber Rudd in The Times, who have gone full Skwawkbox and suggested the Home Office’s recent woes are a part of a campaign by Brexit-supporting MPs to undermine the Home Secretary. Almost impressively tone-deaf to brief the papers that the Windrush scandal, Caroline Nokes’ car crash media round, soaring violent crime and the ensuing cock-up of the violent crime strategy launch have all been exaggerated by Leavers to do in Rudd. The Windrush revelations have been led by that famous Leave-supporting newspaper The Guardian and half of these fiascos are Theresa May’s fault anyway. To be fair to Amber, the Times piece does say halfway down that she “is understood to reject such conspiracy theories”. That other ministers are indulging such theories goes some way to explaining the cross-government handling of the Windrush fiasco…
