Rats in a Sack: The Spectator heads for civil war

Sayers, described by colleagues as cold, aloof and ferociously ambitious, is the five-year-long editor-in-chief of the Marshall-owned Unherd – the website for “people who dare to think for themselves”, or so the marketing slogan reads.

Certainly, Sayers wasted little time in establishing pecking order once the news of Marshall’s acquisition broke.

“Delighted to confirm that OQS Media, which owns and operates UnHerd, has today completed its acquisition of The Spectator and Apollo magazines. I will remain CEO of the group, and publisher of Spectator and Apollo,” he tweeted.

What Fraser Nelson makes of his now reporting to a fellow editor who has precisely zero experience of running an actual print magazine business makes of this hasty positioning is unclear, but a well-placed source tells your correspondent there may be trouble ahead.

“Fraser had a brilliant understanding with Andrew Neil. Neil appreciated what Fraser could do editorially and left him to it. Fraser has always had the utmost respect for Andrew, who provided him with a firewall between the owners and made sure his editorial autonomy was absolutely paramount.

“Now with Freddie at the helm of the business, that delicate balance is blown apart. Why would an editor of Fraser Nelson’s stature take his marching orders from someone who hasn’t got the first clue about magazines? I fear Freddie’s bottomless ambition and Fraser’s awareness of his own worth point to a car crash of office politics very soon.”

For his part, Nelson’s public pronouncements on the takeover have been judiciously polite and complimentary towards his new masters.

But with all the attendant job opportunities for an editor who helped create such enormous shareholder value in a world where print success stories are almost as rare as the benefits of Marshall’s beloved Brexit, Sayers will have to be uncharacteristically deferential towards his latest employee. Watch this space!

Christmas is edging ever closer, but what to buy for the square-eyed bigot in your life? Fortunately the GB News merchandise store is full of ideas for under the tree.

What about a pair of socks? “Sock it to the mainstream media with a pair of tartan socks from GB News,” says the blurb. A snip at just – checks – £26 a pair!

And for just £30 you can get a “Don’t Kill Cash Money Clip”, a way to simultaneously carry your notes and show support for the channel’s anti-contactless campaign for which it had its knuckles rapped by Ofcom.

Alas, in the unlikely event you want to part with thirty quid for what is essentially a small, bent piece of metal, you, er, have to pay by card.

Like Oasis, the European Research Group is back. At the weekend it was reported that Robert Jenrick’s camp had done a secret deal with Mark Francois, chairman of the group who, it was alleged, told candidates that they would only back candidates who were prepared to do a deal with Farage’s Reform party (both sides deny the claims).

Unlike Oasis, however, it is not clear the European Research Group can actually cobble together five members for their reunion tour. While Francois remains an MP, his two deputies, David Jones and Andrea Jenkyns, lost their seats in July’s election.

Other ERG luminaries also now seeking gainful employment include Steve Baker, Thérèse Coffey, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Penny Mordaunt, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, Chris Pincher, Bim Afolami, Michael Fabricant, Jonathan Gullis, Nigel Mills and ‘Bungalow’ Bill Wiggin (he’s not got much up top).

It poses the question of exactly how many votes Penfold lookalike Francois thought he could promise Jenrick. Rather than getting the band back together, he seems to have gone solo…

Someone might need to inform Pincher about his employment status, by the way. His online byline for his column in magazine The Critic still describes him as “MP for Tamworth since 2010”, despite him being forced to resign last year following a damning report into his conduct by the Commons Select Committee on Standards (he was the “Pincher by name, Pincher by nature” one, for those confusing their disgraced Tories).

It’s select committee election season in the House of Commons, with MPs eyeing up the selection of chairmanships on offer and their tasty £18,309 salaries.

This year much of the conversation has centred around the number of first-time, newly-elected MPs seeking to stand for the roles, with more experienced members moaning they need to pay their dues first. But equally interesting is the Conservatives’ candidate for membership of the modernisation select committee.

That candidate is Christopher Chope, a right-wing headbanger best known for objecting to a bill which sought to outlaw upskirting, the act of taking a picture under a person’s clothing without their permission. 

He also objected to plans to host a global women’s conference in the Commons and to granting a posthumous pardon to Alan Turing over his conviction for “homosexual activity”, and in 2013 faced criticism for referring to parliamentary staff as “servants”. Just the man to drag the Palace of Westminster into the 21st century!

Liberal Democrat MP Jamie Stone, meanwhile, has been appointed unopposed to chair the petitions committee, the body which considers the e-petitions submitted on Parliament’s petitions website.

It has recently published the list of those which were rejected at the end of the last parliamentary session. These included “Stop the FA and the Premier League from scrapping FA Cup replays” (not, technically, a job for the government), “I would like a small football pitch made near my house to play with my friends”, “Make David Tennant a Lord” and “Build a Primark”.

Just in case the last one wasn’t specific enough, under “more details” the petitioner adds: “Next to lidal” [sic].

Dominic Cummings has published a new Substack post on The Startup Party, his planned new outfit to replace the Conservatives on the right. It runs to 18,792 words.

“Sashi is a very decent guy and serious about public service,” posted Michael Gove on Twitter/X this week, trumpeting the news that Sashi Mylvaganam, a former leader of the Liberal Democrats on Surrey Heath council, had crossed the floor to join the Conservative group. “It’s instructive that he’s left the Surrey Heath Lib Dems to join the Conservatives – he will be a real asset.”

And what an asset! In 2019 he was forced to apologise for sharing comments comparing the  then prime minister Boris Johnson to Adolf Hitler. Perhaps Gove agreed?

Last Sunday (September 8) was a big day for birthdays. Household names celebrating included England white-ball cricket captain Jos Buttler (34), actor Martin Freeman (53), US senator Bernie Sanders (83) and former minister Margaret Hodge (80).

So which national treasure did the Times select to head that day’s list, complete with picture? Why, Lachlan Murdoch, 53, chairman of News Corp, of course!

Right-wing blowhard Mike Graham’s show on Talk (the former TalkTV, which is no longer on TV) has been renamed, having previously been called The Independent Republic.

It’s now titled Mike Graham’s Morning Glory. We’ll leave it to him to Google what the phrase is slang for. Preferably in incognito mode.

ENTIRELY NORMAL AND NOT IN ANY WAY COMPLETELY BARKING QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“The government, like a pudding, lacks a theme at the moment. Good puddings do. A bad pudding doesn’t. A summer pudding – I think we all know what we get with that. Whether you like it or not, you know what you’re getting” 

Robert Buckland, former justice secretary, BBC Radio 5 Live

Initial extracts from Diane Abbott’s new autobiography offer an insight into her relationship with Jeremy Corbyn, whom she dated early on in her political career.

“Once, after I lamented our lack of social activity as a couple, he pondered it for a few days and told me we were going out,” she writes. “Feeling excited, I dressed up nicely and we bundled into the car. I had no idea where we were going – perhaps a nice wine bar? 

“It turned out Jeremy’s idea of a social outing was to drive me to Highgate cemetery and proudly show me the tomb of Karl Marx.”

It’s a wonder the old charmer has managed to persuade three women to marry him!

The worst piece of branded merchandise in this year’s Conservative Party leadership election season belongs to a candidate who last stood in 2001. Attendees at the 20th birthday party of Iain Duncan Smith’s right-wing Centre for Social Justice think-tank were presented with beer bottles bedecked with an image of the hapless former leader wearing a trilby and clutching a foaming pint.

Fury at the Daily Mail at England acting football manager Lee Carsley’s decision not to sing the national anthem ahead of his first game against Ireland, with hack Jonathan McEvoy particularly incensed.

“Even in stuttering victory… part of a national heritage was burnt before the game started,” he fumed. “It came to this: a 50-year-old former Ireland midfielder taking over the England team and remaining still-lipped as God Save the King was played.

“You might say Ireland’s new Icelandic manager Heimir Hallgrimsson, successor to Stephen Kenny, did not sing the Irish anthem, Amhran na bhFiann, after that country’s president Michael D Higgins tottered around on his walking sticks. But that is their business. This is ours.”

Or “theirs”, he might have said. For McEvoy was born in Rhyl and grew up in Prestatyn, both of which, eagle-eyed readers may have spotted, are in Wales.

With news that Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s oddball former svengali, is mulling a run for the governorship of California (he’s been a US citizen since 2021), it’s worth rereading one of the standout passages from Rory Stewart’s bestseller Politics On The Edge, as he met the shoeless wonder for the first time.

“He told me rapidly that he wanted ‘to blow up the Foreign Office’, which he thought was useless, and get rid of the ambassadors. Did I agree? As I began to try to frame what I thought worked and what didn’t work about the Foreign Office, he was on to a discussion about technology and the European Union. Almost everything I said seemed to excite him. He would nod furiously or express surprise and pause in apparent wonder at things I would have guessed he had already considered.

“Later, I saw him on the floor staring at a map, saying: ‘Fuck me, look how big Scotland is. This is just fucking mad, man.’”