The Telegraph and The Spectator, Britain’s most prominent center-right broadsheet and news magazine, are set to be bought out by U.S. firm RedBird Capital and an Abu Dhabi fund, who will pay off its bank debts and reportedly place disgraced ex-CNN president Jeff Zucker in charge. Zucker would almost certainly drag both publications to the left.
At CNN, he oversaw the celebration of the Chinese Communist Party’s founding, pushed staff to divide America and overhype supposed scandals surrounding the Trump administration, and presided over multiple, internal sex scandals.
The Telegraph has increasingly adopted left-wing issues on social and cultural issues, promoting adultery, defending Cuties, and suggesting the “theory that history is defined by alpha males feels unfashionable and offensive.” Broadly, however, the brand has retained center-right dispositions, endorsing Brexit in 2016, as well platforming the likes of Nigel Farage, and publishing anti-woke exposés.
The Spectator has drifted leftward for some time, chaired by globalist Andrew Neil, who is pro-immigration and pro-amnesty. The magazine supported Brexit in 2016, but from a neoliberal “global Britain” perspective.
If taken over by Zucker, the newspaper and magazine will be the latest (and last) right-leaning publications in Britain to be taken over by the left. The Daily Mail was taken over by an anti-Brexit editor in 2018, while the Daily Express, once a strong supporter of Nigel Farage, Brexit, and border controls, was taken over by a far-left conglomerate which immediately banned negative stories on immigration the same year.