Nandy sinks Telegraph sale… is Paul Marshall waiting in the wings?

Lisa Nandy personally intervened to kibosh the proposed takeover of the Telegraph this afternoon, according to well-placed sources. The secretary of state for media told the US investment firm that its £500m takeover would, after all, have to go through a public inquiry — at which point RedBird and their Arab partners, International Media Investments of Abu Dhabi, realised the game was up. So now the most protracted sale of a newspaper group in history enters its umpteenth phase.

“RedBird operated under the assumption that pressure from the United Arab Emirates to Downing Street would see the bid nodded through. They hoped there would be no referral. Instead Lisa Nandy has scared them off,” Rats in a Sack was told today.

That Nandy appears to have done more to defend the Daily Telegraph than the BBC this week is not lost on Rats.

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The shock news is being seen as a win for Telegraph editor-in-chief of 11 years, Chris Evans, who was part of a campaign against the takeover on the grounds that RedBird would bring with them undue Chinese and Emirati influence.

But it’s bad news for former FT media editor Matthew Garrahan, who had joined RedBird last week on the understanding he would be parachuted into the Telegraph as either editor or CEO once the takeover was complete. Fresh from his leaving drinks at the FT, Garrahan is now looking like a fifth wheel on the Redbird wagon.

Despite the temporary victory, it still leaves the title mired in uncertainty as the sales process enters its third year.

Some at the Telegraph hope former ad man Lord Maurice Saatchi will revive his bid. But the big question now is will Paul Marshall, owner of GB News, UnHerd and The Spectator, be weighing up a cheap-as-chips bid for the increasingly politically well-aligned (read right wing nutso) Telegraph and further cement his position as the most influential man in British media today?