MEDIA STUDIES
Congratulations to the Express for holding on to so many Tory readers
STEPHEN GLOVER
Just over a hundred years ago, on 24 April 1900, the first edition of the Daily Express was published. Within 19 years it had been acquired by Max Aitken, later Lord Beaver- brook. Under his ownership it became the most successful title in the world. Only 40 years ago it achieved its highest daily circula- tion of more than 4.3 million copies.
Just over two years ago Rosie Boycott became editor of the Express. (The Daily has recently been revived to mark the paper's 100th anniversary.) During her tenure sales have fallen by some 8 per cent, and now hover at a little over a million copies a day. The good news is that the decline in circula- tion is becoming less steep. She has produced a spirited newspaper. Most of my colleagues at the rival Daily Mail, where I write a column, would disagree. They shake their heads in wonderment as they flick through the Daily Express with a professional eye. But easy as it is to poke fun, we must remember that Ms Boycott has an editorial and marketing budget that is much smaller than the Mail's. And she is trying to do something immensely difficult that has been pulled off only once or twice in the his- tory of British journalism — to change a paper's culture and politics while reversing its long-time fall in sales. Is she succeeding? The other day I came across a figure that made my eyes pop out. According to Mori's latest figures, 45 per cent of Daily Express readers say they intend to vote Tory at the next election. If this does not surprise you, it should. In her two-year stint Ms Boycott has yanked the paper from the centre-right ground it had occupied since its first edition and placed it in the Blairite mainstream. With the exception of the columnist Peter Hitchens, and the occasional piece by Mary Kenny, the paper is pro- Europe, anti-Hague and generally very PC. Now what is astonishing is that at the last election, if Mori is to be believed, 49 per cent of Express readers voted Tory. In other words, unrelenting Blairism and right-on politics have had almost no effect in whit- tling down the proportion of Tory readers. According to Mori's most recent figures, 47 per cent of Mail readers say they will vote Conservative. This is the extraordinary fact: the small 'c' conservative Mail and the large `P' Progressive Express have almost exactly the same proportion of Tory readers, though the Mail, of course, sells over twice as many copies. Is it possible that most Express readers are unaware of the huge changes that have taken place in their newspaper over the past two years? It is a chastening thought. Perhaps all of Ms Boycott's editorials pass over their heads. Perhaps they do not read, or cannot understand, the young and enlightened columnists whom she has gar- nered from the streets of London. So long as Mr Hitchens is banging away (and I say that as a very great admirer of his work) these readers are prepared to keep on tak- ing the paper they have always read.
Though some of them have left. The fall in sales since Ms Boycott took over sug- gests to me that the most reactionary old- time Express readers, or those sufficiently awake to realise what is being done to their newspaper, have jumped ship, or possibly simply died. No doubt a few younger read- ers have taken their place, though not enough to make up the numbers. Mean- while much of the old, though slowly crum- bling, core remains loyal to the paper.
If all this is true, it shows the magnitude of the task facing Ms Boycott and Lord Hollick, chief executive of United News & Media, which owns the Daily Express. They hoist the flag of Blairism in the hope that young, metropolitan non-Tories will rally to the cause. But, on the whole, they do not. So they are still stuck with a declining num- ber of right-of-centre older readers. That, in a nutshell, is the terrible predicament in which the Daily Express finds itself.
Is there a way out? Yes, I am sure that a brilliant publisher with almost unlimited funds could save the paper. It has been done before: in the 1930s the Daily Mirror began its transformation from a failing right-of-centre title into a mass circulation left-of-centre one. But I somehow don't think that Lord Hollick is the person to bring about this sort of near miracle. He is not a newspaperman, and the Express rep- resents only a tiny part of his empire. He keeps on saying that the editor alone should edit — a good maxim in normal times but in these circumstances tanta- mount to the First Sea Lord saying that the captain of a holed and sinking ship should be left to his own devices.
Yet deliverance could be at hand. If the merger between United News & Media and Carlton goes ahead — it is being investigated by the Competition Commission — Michael Green, Carlton's chairman, may well insist on the sale of the Express titles. My guess is that a deal would be struck whereby Lord Hollick was allowed to hang on to the papers until after the next general election. (Not that the Express, with all its Tory readers, is likely to do the Blairite cause much good.) One way or another the moment of truth, even of salvation, is at hand. Things at the Daily Express will not go on as they are.
Britain's first exclusively on-line main- stream magazine comes closer. Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, the 25-year-old former spe- cial adviser to Peter Mandelson, has been to Seattle to talk to the boys at Slate, the on-line magazine owned by Microsoft. `Oofy' Wegg-Prosser (also now known as Oofy Web-Processor) has got the outlines of an agreement. Slate would have 25 per cent of Slate UK in return for the use of its material, and Oofy and his partner, Ed Vaizey, would find a handful of sharehold- ers who would own the other 75 per cent. They are said to be looking for about £1.5 million, and interested parties include Jacob Rothschild. One difficulty has been tying down an editor. Kim Fletcher and Alexander Chancellor have both accepted, and then been lured to lusher pastures.
Will it prosper? I haven't the faintest idea. Nor, I suspect, does anyone else. Obviously there would be no point in Slate UK if it did not contain a lot of British material unavailable in the existing version of Slate. But it is cheering to see Oofy and his partner showing so much entrepreneuri- al vigour, and we must all wish them luck.
My first editor, Bill Deedes, told me to eschew irony — advice I have generally ignored. But I may myself have been blind to the irony in Michael Gove's Times piece which I quoted last week. An irony expert tells me that when Captain Gove wrote of a politician who `once said who dares wins' this was an ironical rebuke to the inactive Michael Portillo rather than a coded mes- sage of support. Scholars will no doubt argue about this for many years. But Mr Gove's most recent piece in praise of William Hague — unless that was also iron- ical — suggests to me that he may have put Mr Portillo behind him. What we need now is a non-ironical piece from Michael Gove attacking Mr Partin°.
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