Much like an excited puppy being shown around its new home, tails were wagging here at The Spectator Australia this week as we had it confirmed that we have a new owner, after a tortuous process that has had us all on tenterhooks for well over a year. Sir Paul Marshall, the brains and money behind GB News and a strong supporter of conservative organisations such as ARC (the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship), has bought our ‘mothership’, the UK Spectator, in a saga worthy of a Jeffrey Archer novel. To give you the Hollywood elevator pitch: unbeknownst to virtually anyone, the previous owners, the billionaire Barclay brothers, put our magazine and the UK Telegraph daily newspaper up as collateral against a multi-billion deal that went belly up for them. The bank took the magazine and the paper in lieu of the debt and tried to auction them off. Some 22 prospective buyers lined up for the original purchase, but in an eleventh hour twist the Barclays struck a deal with an Arab consortium to re-buy the debt back off the bank, giving them de facto ownership. This raised concerns about editorial independence which resulted in heated debate within Westminster and an attempt by the Barclays and the Arabs to put in a former CNN American honcho to run the magazine at arms length. Our former chairman Andrew Neil, himself a former Sunday Times editor and BBC TV presenter, raised serious concerns about this deal earlier this year, and eventually it collapsed after a threatened parliamentary inquiry. At which point Sir Paul Marshall, who founded the brilliant GB News (the UK conservative TV network that took some inspiration, as it so happens, from Sky News Australia’s top-rating Outsiders programme) stepped in.

Sir Marshall this week payed a staggering one hundred million pounds for the magazine that is the oldest in the English-speaking world and has been edited by, among others, Nigel Lawson and Boris Johnson. Interestingly, Mr Neil, who resigned this week, pointed out the following in his email to all staff:

‘It is sad, even unfair, that nobody responsible for this success will share in the upside. That is a result of the strange and surprising circumstances, definitely not of our making, we found ourselves in in June 2023. Suddenly and without warning we were placed in receivership because our then proprietors had used us as collateral for massive debts unrelated to us (without ever telling us). They then failed to pay these debts. That explains… the peculiar sales process, in which those who’ve created the added value do not get to share in it.’

It was the visionary Mr Neil who founded The Spectator Australia in late 2008 with first Oscar Humphries (son of the late Barry Humphries) and then Tom Switzer as editors. Ten years ago last month, the current editor-in-chief Rowan Dean took over, and under a decade of his stewardship subscriptions have grown dramatically; the magazine first turned and has since remained in profit; the Australian website and online magazine Flat White were established (firstly with the late Christian Kerr and now under the fabulous editorship of Alexandra Marshall); a series of other intiatives were implemented and The Spectator Australia has gone from strength to strength and is envied around the world for our stable of writers and brilliant, provocative covers. As Mr Neil wrote: ‘My proudest recollection will always be the fact that, at a time when legacy print publications were relentlessly cost-cutting and regularly making huge numbers of good people redundant, I did not preside over a single compulsory redundancy in 20 years. Far from shedding folk we were always expanding and hiring. And we did so in a way that turned what once seemed like a largely Eton-Oxbridge fiefdom into probably the most meritocratic publication in the country.’ For this entire period, the Australian magazine has unashamedly ‘run on the smell of an oily rag’. It is no secret that we have asked much of our writers, our sub-editor, our other talented contributors and that we rely on the generosity, talents, passion and insights of so many individuals to keep our readership informed and entertained on all manner of topics. Allow us to take this opportunity to thank them all. Not to forget our excellent Spectator TV courtesy of ADH TV, our podcast, our daily emails and so much more.

It was The Spectator Australia that stood alone in this country against the tyranny of lockdowns and Covid mandates, that fought tooth and nail against the Voice, that led the charge for the Australian government to stop funding Unrwa (disgracefully reinstated by Penny Wong at the behest of the Teals), that is a lone voice against the climate change orthodoxy and net zero dogma, that refuses to bow to the diktats of diversity, equity, inclusion and other such ‘woke’ fashions, and that unashamedly champions the traditional values of the Australian mainstream.

The new ownership has been widely welcomed by our writers and readers alike, and we look forward to continuing in our time-honoured fashion of fearlessly speaking truth to power. We trust you will remain on that crucial voyage with us.

Most importantly, we welcome Sir Paul and his team and thank them for their belief in our talents and faith in our values.

Let’s leave the final word to Mr Neil: ‘Above all, core to The Spectator’s very raison d’être, is the independence of The Editor. I regarded it as my prime responsibility for 20 years to ensure that, protecting The Editor not just from outside pressures, commercial or political, but even from proprietors. And to provide a dispassionate guiding hand when it was required.’

Thank you, Andrew. You most certainly did. Welcome and congrats, Sir Paul.