The sacking of Geordie Greig: who controls the ‘Daily Mail’?
(Alamy)
Geordie Greig (above) has been sacked as Editor of the Daily Mail. He has lasted only three years in the job. Where his predecessor, Paul Dacre made winding up the “liberal elite” a favoured pastime, Greig took the paper away from its niche as the bastion of Middle England right-wingery (pro-Brexit, pro-NHS, anti-immigration, click-bait heavy) and into the more liberal heartlands of moderation. The paper’s harsh criticism of Boris Johnson throughout the pandemic was seen again in its condemnation during the Owen Paterson affair. Ted Verity, the editor of the Mail on Sunday, will take over, and Greig has been swiftly demoted to consultant editor.
Is this a simple managerial rejig or a result of political pressure? The Mail ’ s owner, Lord Rothermere, has kept a lower profile than either Rupert Murdoch or Richard Desmond. That does not mean he has any less influence; the Mail still holds a considerable print readership and has created an online platform which outstrips its tabloid competitors in traffic and in the density of scantily-clad celebs on show. Like most papers, the traditions of the print run are kept apart from the online team, but Rothermere has decided to join the two , with the American Richard Caccappolo becoming chief executive of the whole media business. Ultimately, newspapers need to sell copies, and websites need to get hits — and to make money from those hits. Proprietors may dream of their influence in Downing Street, but they can only have it if there are enough people reading their news to make a difference.
Yet Verity’s promotion is important beyond the office politics of a newspaper company. His time at the Sunday paper has been impressively controversial, steering a once more liberal sheet towards a line much closer to Dacre’s liking, with some pleasing scoops along the way. The very image of his paper being taken to court by Meghan Markle, high priestess of “wokedom” in all its fictional incarnations, is something bound to please any owner not particularly bothered by financial strains. Verity is a proven success at creating good copy: Greig was known as the most socially connected journalist in town, the emblematic Editor of the Tatler.
Outside London, it’s the sparkle of the copy that makes much more difference than the tattle of the latest Westminster intrigue. Indignation at the politics of MPs is never going to sell as well as their private indiscretions or the latest royal scandal. Most of the journalism that sells is not the first draft of history as much as the latest reiteration of the banal, not so much telling truth to power as spinning lies for the powerless.
Boris Johnson is likely to be pleased at Verity’s appointment, whether or not he had anything to do with it. Greig and Johnson overlapped at Eton but were clearly never friends; it’s a big school, but we still underestimate these connections and rivalries at our loss, especially given Johnson’s past life in the same trade. Greig was Editor of the Evening Standard for a period during the Prime Minister’s time as Mayor of London; his boss then was Evgeny Lebedev, the host of outlandish parties, which Johnson attended. Greig ’s predecessor, Veronica Wadley, supported his bid for the mayoralty and has a husband, Tom Bower, whose sympathetic biography of Johnson praises his dubious record as a hack. Until Dacre announced that he wasn’t interested, the PM tried to manoeuvre him into the top job at Ofcom, in the same way that David Cameron tried to get the Brexit-backing former Editor sacked by Rothermere.
Nevertheless, Johnson does not control the Daily Mail or any other newspaper. The closest he came to influence on Fleet Street was concocting stories from Brussels to entertain the recalcitrant Thatcherites at home in the early 1990s. Yet any new idea is a prime target for the well-oiled Downing Street operation. And Verity will be a much easier Editor to persuade than his clubbable but unsympathetic predecessor.
British politics for this decade will largely be defined by Boris Johnson, not by any of the journalists who attack him. That is why politicians are in power and journalists are in print. Savvy owners will have to keep this in mind; Rupert Murdoch, if nothing else, has made an art form out of pandering to the latest hit in politics or celebrity; recognising where the future lies and adapting to it is the role of the prudent businessmen, not the principled reporter or editor. The removal of figures like Philip Collins (deprived of his Times column for insufficient appreciation of the Prime Minister’s virtues) shows a depressing culture of such sycophancy; its defenders would say it is simply realistic.
After all, journalists are in the job of getting to know their leaders just as much as offering an honest commentary on their leadership skills. Geordie Greig has not left one of the biggest roles in British journalism because of his political leanings but internal changes, yet his departure happens to bring in someone whom those with the cash know is more attuned to their times. What matters is the decisions of his successor and the undeniable influence of his paper.
If it is Johnson’s world, then that’s one many journalists are happy to live in, as others were in the most peaceable days of Blairism. The influence goes both ways. It should surprise no one paying attention that the greatest critics of the “woke ” and the vestiges of a liberal establishment in the pages of the Telegraph and the Spectator are the favourites of a Government for which the culture war is a crucial part of its political messaging, employed by publications of which the Prime Minister and some of his closest allies are former hands. Such a symbiotic relationship is as malignant as it is inevitable.
Not that much of this will be in the head of Ted Verity right now, or Boris Johnson’s as he watches another period of tumult and apparent crisis pass away and his power remains intact. One will be interested in selling papers and the other in winning votes. The greatest crisis for their liberal opponents is that these two are a whole lot better at doing both those things than they are. Politics, like business, is based on mood music. For our grasping, ducking Prime Minister, the key always seems to be major.
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