Marshalling his forces
Why has Paul Marshall paid £100 million for The Spectator? It's not because he finds Toby Young hilarious.
Previously: Election time at the clown college
How many publications and TV channels do you need to have a stake in before you’re a media baron? Surely Paul Marshall must be one now having added The Spectator to his major stake in GB News’ parent company (the hilariously named All Perspectives Ltd) and ownership of UnHerd. He’s also still in the running to acquire the Telegraph titles. But despite or, more likely, because of his growing influence in British media as well as his role chairing one of the country’s biggest hedge funds (Marshall Wace with $50 billion under management) and founding a chain of academy schools (ARK), Marshall ducks anything resembling real scrutiny. He rarely gives interviews and his plans are usually outlined in the blandest of corporate press releases.
Andrew Neil, having tangled with Marshall when he was chair of GB News and one of the initial on-screen ‘talents’, has resigned with immediate effect as chair of The Spectator. He had previously said that he would resign once a deal was done and his comments last year that hedge funds shouldn’t be allowed to own newspapers will not have endeared him to the new boss anyway. In his letter to Spectator staff, which he posted in full on X, he writes:
My greatest regret is that I have not been able to find you a new home guaranteed to nurture the unique chemistry of The Spectator… No doubt the new proprietor will bring assets to the table, perhaps even bigger budgets. However, you can have all the resources in the world but if you don’t understand what really makes The Spectator tick then they will be as naught… Above all, core to The Spectator’s very raison d’être, is the independence of The Editor. I regarded it as my prime responsibility for 20 years to ensure that, protecting The Editor 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 since they have not shared their thinking. Wrapped up in all that pomposity is a simple message: Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Elsewhere in his memo, Neil writes: “It is sad, even unfair, that nobody responsible for this success — that is everybody at 22 Old Queen Street [The Spectator’s offices] — will share in the upside.” The title’s previous owners, the Barclays brothers, used the magazine as collateral for one of their many unpaid debts.
While Neil makes it abundantly clear that he is unimpressed by Marshall, Spectator editor Fraser Nelson unsurprisingly welcomes the new insect overlord:
After a year-long auction drama that involved sheikhs and moguls and even ended up changing the law, The Spectator has a new owner. The financier Sir Paul Marshall is to become the magazine’s 14th proprietor.
Had The Spectator been sold to the Emirati government, as was on the cards, we would have faced obvious questions about our operational and editorial independence. That will be protected under Sir Paul, who is buying The Spectator because he admires what we have achieved, believes in the magazine’s values and, most importantly, knows that we can go further with more investment.What are the values of The Spectator? It’s the magazine that kept the relentlessly racist Taki on as a columnist, with his praise for Greek neo-nazis and the Wehrmacht, until a rape conviction finally forced its hand. It’s where Lloyd Evans used his column to drool over a female academic before writing about his visit to a massage parlour just a few months ago. It’s home to Rod Liddle’s notorious musings on why he could not have been a teacher (“I could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids.”) and his other insights belittling domestic violence, mocking disabled people, and trafficking Islamophobia, racism, and homophobia all with an “it’s just a joke” sneer smeared across his byline picture. It’s where Toby Young and Douglas Murray feel most at home.
Last year, an investigation by Hope Not Hate and The News Agents podcast, revealed that Paul Marshall’s Twitter/X account had liked or retweeted multiple posts calling for the expulsion of refugees and migrants, advocating Islamophobic conspiracies, and decrying homosexuality. One of the liked tweets said, “It’s a matter of time before civil war starts in Europe. The native European population is losing patience with fake refugee invaders.” Another, liked by Marshall’s account, read: “If we want European civilisation to survive we need to not just close the borders but start mass expulsions immediately. We don’t stand a chance unless we start the process very soon.”
A statement shared on Marshall’s behalf with The News Agents said that the account was private and that the likes and retweets highlighted were “a small and unrepresentative sample” which did not reflect his views. Hope Not Hate said a quarter of the material Marshall liked or retweeted was on the same topics and represented the same overall political positions.
If his social media activity is any indication of Marshall’s views then The Spectator will not have to worry for a moment about its editorial independence — it’s already putting out exactly the kind of material the new proprietor loves. UnHerd’s Editor-in-Chief, Freddie Sayers, will now be The Spectator’s publisher. He told The Financial Times that Marshall thinks the brand is “worth every penny” of the £100 million sale price — a 30x multiple of its 2022 earnings — and that Marshall sees it as “a really interesting commercial opportunity”.
Sayers says that “very careful governance structures [are being put in place] to make sure… editorial independence is preserved”. Marshall will be on the board of the holding company, Old Queen Street Media — named after the street shared by both The Spectator and UnHerd — but not of the individual titles. If you believe that will keep the magazine free of his fingerprints, I have a large bridge in London to sell you.
Very rich people snap up media companies for status and influence. Buying The Spectator brand means buying The Spectator garden party to which members of all political parties flock every summer. It also means buying a stable of commentators to have regular access to a chair on Question Time and slots on every other TV and radio political gabfest. The readership of The Spectator in print and online is dwarfed by the number of people who encounter its commentary through broadcast hits.
Buying The Spectator means buying a vestigial air of respectability. The magazine is treated as august and sincere even as it plays host to some of the biggest trolls in British media. The Spectator maintains that position because it serves good canapes and decent champagne every summer and maintains a kind of soft sponsorship of politicians by doling out awards to them. That’s what Marshall has bought and why he’s bought it. A hedge fund owner doesn’t buy a political magazine because he thinks it’ll be a source of riches. He buys it for the cachet, the clout, the access and the influence that comes with it.
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I remember a brief, amusing spat between Private Eye & the Spectator a short while back.
Neil was bragging about the Spectator's achievements, including circulation figures.
Private Eye disclosed theirs and they dwarfed the Spectator's. Wasn't even close.
The Spectator died 25 years ago when Frank Johnson was pushed out to make way for the younger, less talented Johnson.
That was also the end of another era, the one where there was room for working class autodidacts like FJ, who failed the 11 Plus, left school at 15, and then slowly became more erudite and cultured than most of the graduates he employed. Once upon his story was the normal path for cultural figures in the age of Shaw and Orwell, who never went to university but studied the great writers in their own time. It's the old style of working class intellectualism, nothing to do with sneery anti-liberal bores like Martin Daubney ("common as shit", as Ray Gosling said of that style of self-righteous proliness).
Once upon a time The Spectator had sone respect from across the spectrum, but that must be gone now. All it has left is the links to the people who know people, and they will be moving on now a different crowd are in power.