When German media giant Axel Springer finally bought the Telegraph titles this summer, staff were assured that the plan was to pump money into them in a bid to regain their lost glories.
Springer, which completed its purchase of the Telegraph in June, announced it would invest in the title to make it the “leading centre-right media outlet in the English-speaking world”. But as Rats in a Sack reported last month, the owners of Bild and Die Welt had barely got their feet under the table before rumours emerged of swingering job cuts.
Now the cuts have been announced – and, as Rats reported, leading Brexiteers are the first to be marched towards the door marked Ausfahrt. Allison Pearson, the hardline right wing columnist and podcaster, is said to be negotiating her exit package, while Liam Halligan, the economics journalist who has been pumping out pro-Brexit propaganda for literally decades, is also among those departing the paper. Both star in the Telegraph’s incorrectly titled podcast Planet Normal – “The podcast that speaks your language”.
The departures (which have overshadowed those of fellow Brexiteers Sherelle Jacobs, Dia Chakravarty, Con Coughlin and Philip Johnston) have been met with apocalyptic outpourings from the right of British politics, where the right of firms to make cost savings has traditionally been seen as an integral part of free market economics. Rather, the desire of a new owner to shed super-expensive marquee writers from a struggling newspaper is seen as the coming of a Communist dictatorship.
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Mayfly-like former prime minister Liz Truss posted on X that the departures were “complete self-immolation by the Telegraph” and described Halligan as “someone who defies the economic groupthink that has driven this country into the ground”. One of the ways that Halligan defied economic groupthink was by being one of the few journalists to think Truss’s disastrous mini-budget to be a triumph, writing that it was “mainstream and entirely reasonable” and “a bold, but far from irresponsible set of policy proposals”.
Lucy Connolly, the childminder jailed for a racist X post who has since emerged as a Reform-backed free speech heroine, posted that Pearson was “the Queen and my hero”, while the writer and broadcaster Sue Cook described the hatstand columnist as “one of the UK’s very best, most respected, most courageous and most astute journalists”. Cook wrote on X: “That would be a shocking loss to the Telegraph. My subscription would stop at once. Tell me it’s not true.” Alas it is, Sue!
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Former actor turned far right activist Laurence Fox wrote that Pearson was “the only reason most people read the Telegraph”, adding that “the market is already saturated with far-centrist extremist dross”, whatever that means. Meanwhile, Alex Philips – who double-jobs as both a presenter on Talk and a policy advisor to Reform – wrote: “What is happening is another leftist attack on Europe. Another pillar crumbled. Another institution taken over and destroyed. Wake up. The long slow Communist takeover of Europe is currently on steroids.”
Nurse! The smelling salts!
And Halligan himself, in a lengthy X post written with the sort of earnest mourning normally reserved for the death of a Pope, wrote: “Why this decision has been made, and whether or not my columns were any good, is for others to judge.” Happy to do so, Liam! They weren’t.
Pearson and Halligan are said to be negotiating to take their podcast, Planet Normal, with them, where they hope to run it as an independent venture. Meanwhile, others expected to depart include Sherelle Jacobs, still billed on the website as “a bold voice on geopolitics and economics”, and Dia Chakravarty, the paper’s former Brexit editor whose recent columns have included “The Channel migrant crisis can’t be blamed on Brexit”, “No, Brexit has not sent Britain to the back of the queue for trade deals” and “Yes, Brexit did deliver an extra £350m a week for the NHS”.
Con Coughlin, the septuagenarian executive defence and foreign affairs editor, is also said to be leaving the paper, along with Philip Johnston, the assistant editor who spent the best part of three decades in Parliament’s Lobby for the title. Fortunately, Reform is still advertising for up to 25 hacks for its new online TV channel, promising “competitive” salaries…
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