Is Boris Johnson heading to the Evening Standard?
How likely is it that the ex-PM could be the next editor?
In July of 2021 we wrote a few words that attempted to trace the decline of the Evening Standard:
The TL;DR version of that issue is: If you make a series of terrible business decisions and then repeatedly hire ex-Tory ministers or their close relatives to edit your newspaper then you shouldn’t be surprised when you start haemorrhaging readers and money.
When we left it in June 2021, Emily Sheffield (David Cameron’s sister-in-law) was still editor and a guy called Charles Yardley had been drafted in from Forbes to take over as CEO and transform the Standard into “a mobile-first media company”.
In July of this year we went back to check if the paper was still breathing and found it announcing a pre-tax loss of £14m and ‘reducing the workforce’ by over 25%.
Sheffield had managed to cling on to her editorship for a whole 15 months before “departing with immediate effect by mutual consent” and the paper’s deputy editor, Charlotte Ross, had been installed as ‘acting editor’.
We’re not sure if it’s a ‘mobile first media company’ yet because no one actually knows what that means. But we do know that the paper has been reduced to taking money from an organisation called the Faith & Media Initiative, for advertorial. The Faith & Media Initiative is connected to the Radiant Foundation, which is associated with the Church of the Latter Day Saints… Better known as the Mormons, an organisation which happily states on its website that “acting on” same-sex attraction is a sin.
This month Charlotte Ross also had cause to update her LinkedIn. After handing in her resignation, she’s now off to be the deputy editor for features and lifestyle at The Telegraph. For those of you that are counting, that means Charlotte lasted less than nine months.
Next up for the iron throne acting editor position is deputy editor Jack Lefley, who you’ll probably remember from such classics as 2018’s This is why Bath can actually be a destination for young families and 2008’s Strawberries go up but that won't worry Wimbledon's top seeds (Jack has been at the Standard since late puberty it seems).
If the current trend continues, then we can expect Jack to last until around January 2023 before he decides to leave and go do something less thankless and with a longer lifespan. Like clearing land mines.
This turnover rate might be seem relatively relaxed if you’re the Tory party (and let’s not forget, the Standard backed Liz Truss for PM), but for a so-called ‘quality newspaper’ to not be able to find a permanent editor for over a year is pretty poor going.
Unless there’s another, more nightmarish, reason that the Standard’s board hasn’t bothered to install a proper editor quite yet. Could they just be biding their time until their chosen one becomes available?
Where do you see yourself in five years, Boris?
Back in July, just as the Standard’s acting editor was handing in her resignation, her future employer, The Telegraph, was publishing its regular column by associate political editor, Christopher Hope.
In that week’s “unparalleled insight into what's really going on at Westminster,” Chris was wondering whether Boris Johnson might be planning to “set up a new political party to take on his enemies in the establishment”.
But, in the very first paragraph of his piece, Chris chucks away another morsel of Westminster gossip:
“The talk of City Hall is that the PM might ‘do a George Osborne’ and become editor of the London Evening Standard.”
Okay, let’s take this seriously for a second, if only because so many past horrors could have been avoided if we’d just taken Boris Johnson more seriously at the time.
Why would Johnson abandon a future of after dinner speeches and lucrative ‘advisory’ positions in the City for an actual job editing a failing newspaper?
The number one reason would be Evgeny Lebedev. Sometimes known as Baron Lebedev of Hampton and Siberia. Also known as the son of ex-KGB lieutenant-colonel, Alexander Lebedev.
Evgeny is, of course, the chairman of the board at Evening Standard Ltd. A position which he was gifted by his dad when he bought the paper for a quid back in 2009 (you can tell Evgeny takes his job seriously, because his Twitter profile pic is a photo of him in a newsroom, sporting a waist coat and rolled up shirt sleeves like a Russian J. Jonah Jameson).
Boris is big mates with Evgeny and his dad. It was Boris that gave Evgeny his peerage (to the disbelief of pretty much everyone, including MI6) and it was Ev’s converted castle near Perugia in Italy that the then foreign secretary went to for a big knees up in 2018, against the advice of his officials and without his 24/7 security detail. At dinner that night he was sat next to Katie Price who stood up to make a toast, “announced that ‘champagne and Pricey don’t mix,’ and then lifted her top to expose her breasts, turning to face the foreign secretary as she did so.”
Between drinks and ogling Katie Price, Johnson had a meeting with Alexander Lebedev, but we don’t know what that meeting was about because no foreign office officials were present. This was, don’t forget, at the height of the Skripal poisoning crisis.
In 2015, Evgeny and Boris even spent a night together, ‘sleeping rough’ on the streets of London to raise money for an Independent campaign (Evgeny owns the Independent too). And we’re told that Evgeny once had a pet wolf, which he named ‘Boris’.
The other main reason to think Johnson might add an editor’s salary to the £115,000 a year that he can claim from the taxpayer, is that (unlike George Osborn) he’s got some experience.
Johnson became a reporter for The Times in 1987 but was fired for fabricating a quotation. That didn’t stop The Telegraph hiring him to be their Brussels correspondent, and he later became assistant editor of the paper. While he was doing that he was also being the political columnist for The Spectator, and in 1999 he became editor of the magazine, a role which he kept until 2005 (it was in 2004 that he wrote the article for the Spectator about the Hillsborough disaster, in which he accused Liverpudlians of “wallowing in their own misery” and claimed drunken fans were partly responsible for the tragedy).
So, why hasn’t he taken the role at the Standard yet? Well, on October 13 The Spectator’s political gossip columnist ‘Steerpike’ wrote that it was rumoured that Boris had indeed been offered the job, but that he had turned it down and Lebedev was now eyeing up another former Tory minister for the role… One Rishi Sunak.
We all know what happened next. The day after that column was published Kwasi Kwarteng ‘stood down’ as Chancellor, and a week later Liz Truss was dusting off ‘the podium of death’.
Since then of course, Rishi has had a better offer, while Boris’s LinkedIn profile still reads ‘Open to new work’.
There is one other reason Johnson might end up taking the job at the Standard. Ego.
This is a man who loves power, influence and the limelight; all things that are in pretty short supply on the dinner party circuit or in non-executive directorships.
Boris Johnson needs a platform tall enough so that as many people might benefit from his wit and intelligence. And if he can take potshots at his old political foes from that platform, so much the better. After all, Johnson once said that the job of journalists is to be “always abusing people”.
And if you’re going to abuse, insult and belittle people, you might as well do it while hiding behind a Russian Oligarch who’s worth around 250 million pounds.
Coming up on Wednesday 🌳
Our subscriber-only edition this week sees the return of Paul Wood’s Tales from the Urban Forest. This time Paul’s looking at how a quest for beautification that began one hundred years ago led to a present day alien invasion.
If you subscribe today, that issue will be in your inbox first thing Wednesday morning:
5 little bits
Don’t forget that, even though the national rail strikes were called off, there’s still a tube strike planned for Thursday, which means there’ll be “limited or no” service across the whole network. The good transport news this week is that the three sections of the Elizabeth line have been connected up, so you don’t have to change at Paddington or Liverpool Street any more. Plus it’s running on Sundays now.
Russian TV has been boasting about its ‘Killjoy missile’, which “can get to London from Belarus in 9 minutes,” (skip to the 1:15 mark for that bit). The cheery sounding presenter goes on to boast that the missile has a range of over 2,000 km and can reach a speed 12 times the speed of sound. “9 minutes and ‘Hello London!’” he quips. “Or rather ‘Hello and goodbye London!’”.
The FT has a long, detailed (and not-paywalled) look into the ongoing reimagining of Canary Wharf and how the area is being rebuilt for people to actually live in, not just commute to.
Boston-based seafood restaurant Saltie Girl opens on North Audley Street in Mayfair tomorrow, and there’s quite a lot of salivating going on over the thought of the “clam chowder; New England lobster roll; whole fried seabass; and fried lobster and waffles”. The Standard has a ‘first look’, which includes the prediction that the Martini with caviar olives is a “TikTok star in the making”. While The Times (paywall alert) goes with the clickbaity headline “Would you pay £31 for a can of tuna?”.
We don’t normally link to gossipy stuff in The Sun but, even if it’s not entirely accurate, just the idea that Liz Truss’s card was declined in a London Bridge restaurant is enough to cheer us up after a rather grey and damp weekend.