There used to be a time, not so very long ago, when self-respecting individuals
with an interest in politics but no particular moral certainties of their
own would have to wait until Friday every week to find out what they
thought about the pressing political issues of the day. It was only after they
had read the political weekly magazine of their choice and absorbed the
guidance therein that they would know for certain where they stood. Not
that anyone would ever have admitted as much, of course.
To a certain extent this state of affairs still remains as a potential on Tribune, at least. It has continued to publish a firm leader line with a proper left-wing disregard for fashionable niceties, and it is every bit as uncompromising today – well, almost – as it was 50 years ago. Any socialist anxious to ascertain the correct position or appropriate response to adopt towards recent events can always guarantee to find a straightforward answer. The sorry difference being that the Tribune editorial line – and, indeed, the entire contents of the publication – are all miserably irrelevant. These days nobody reads the paper or pays the slightest bit of attention to what it says or thinks. Or not much, anyway, unless you count the odd ambi-tious cabinet minister – Gordon Brown, David Blunkett and Jack Straw all consider it worth the trouble to write for it, which says something.
But we have always known, since its inception, what to expect from Tribune. The same cannot be said about the other two principal political weekly magazines, The Spectator and The New Statesman, which while being roughly representative of political opinion, respectively on the Right and on the Left, have both had periods in their history when they were acceptable only within different disciplines. In the years since its revival under Ian Gilmour in the 1950s, The Spectator has variously espoused the causes of progressive Conservatism – however oxymoronic that may sound – Right-wing Conservatism, independence with a Tory tinge and High Anglican Conservatism. During much the same space of time the New Statesman has undergone a similarly different series of commitments during which it has served as the defining magazine of the intellectual Left, of the moral Left, of the paranoid Left, of the very Left and of the not very Left. There have also been intermittent periods of it representing the views of the barking Left. Some of these sentences, as they say in the magistrates’ courts, run concurrently.
What is interesting at the moment is that both the magazines – and Tribune, too, for that matter – are in an uncertain state. Mark Seddon has edited Tribune on a hand-to-mouth basis for 10 years, feeding his own family by doing freelance work elsewhere. He can well be forgiven for starting to look for a real job – possibly even in politics as he stood as a Labour candidate last year and is still a member of the emasculated party national executive committee. Tribune will probably stagger on if there is enough left-wing sentiment to fund it. It was at risk of closure earlier this year because of a threatened libel action from the trade union leader, Sir Ken Jackson, which it couldn’t afford to defend. The union decided not to proceed with the case and the newspaper breathed again. The next crisis will be over the future editorship and that cannot be far away.
What the leader did not say, however, was that as well as desperately seeking new, younger readers the other main aim was to save money – £150,000 a year is one figure floating around – because of the slump in sales. That figure is obviously a huge one in proportion to the budget of the magazine but also gives some idea of what this exercise in political publishing is costing the proprietor, Geoffrey Robinson. He is losing a lot of money, although precisely how much is not clear because the available circulation figures – 25,000 a week is the claim – are far from realistic. “Massaged something rotten” was one description; the true figure for real sales is “very low indeed” and kept very secret.
The good news is that Robinson has not yet run out of his many millions, nor is he about to weary of this venture. Since he bought the magazine he has revelled in his role there as something of a man about town, turning up cheerfully as the genial host of the very long and well-lubricated weekly editorial lunches, no matter what the crises in which he has been enveloped. He has further fostered the magazine’s social position – it never really had one before – with the provision of very generous hospitality at receptions at Labour’s party conferences, thus ensuring a good turn-out of the media people who matter. In the early days the magazine’s uncritical endorsement of “new” Labour and enthusiasm for Tony Blair and all his works also guaranteed a lot of ministers would show up to thank Geoffrey for his efforts. While no longer in the Government himself, Robinson remains strongly committed to the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, and hopes and believes that he can use his magazine to assist his friend’s career. And if and when Gordon becomes Prime Minister – well, he’ll have the Statesman on his side and Geoffrey will be someone to reckon with once more.
In the meantime there is the problem of how to persuade more people to read the thing. It has a reputation within the political trade at present for being either dull, or silly, while it simultaneously fails to appeal to people who are interested in politics but outside the Westminster beltway. The new broom of Robinson’s ownership with Ian Hargreaves as editor in 1996 initially swept all the old unreconstructed lefties out of the office and off the pages. That lost a fair number of traditional readers but failed to secure new ones. Peter Wilby, who succeeded Hargreaves, is a committed socialist, an old-fashioned Bennite according to some, and the passage of the Blair years has done nothing to soften his stance. On the contrary he has become ever more critical of the Government, notably with the anti-American line he took after September 11, and he has given free rein to those like his friend, Nick Cohen, who seek to use the magazine to attack the Prime Minister in person.
As if Wilby was not capable of creating controversy on his own, his deputy Cristina Odone who was brought in to temper his political stance is good at it, too. Although Wilby took the rap and apologised for the row over “The Kosher Conspiracy ?” issue of the magazine, which several members of staff regarded as openly racist, it was Odone who insiders say was the inspiration for it. “She’d been trying to persuade Peter to do it for months,” said one. Wilby doesn’t have much time for Odone, an American who is the former editor of the Catholic Herald and not a political animal. She is good at getting the paper mentioned, however, knows lots of people on the gossip columns and has introduced an unexpected category of guests to the weekly lunches: right-wing academics, people from the Palace, posh wine merchants, City types. There’s a lot of people calling each other “Darling!”, which would make anyone old enough to remember the legacy of Kingsley Martin shudder.
Things did not change, however, after Ashley’s protracted departure. In the re-launch issue the contents page strap-line for an article by Lauren Booth (Cherie Blair’s half-sister, who fulfils the role of the almost obligatory embarrassing relative from whom all leading politicians suffer) read: “There was something hanging between his legs. It wasn’t a belt”. This led the unsuspecting reader to an enthusiastic review by Ms Booth of Tony Benn’s one-man theatre performance at the Old Vic, although, it must immediately be emphasised, the provocative extracted quote had nothing whatever to do with the Left’s esteemed elder statesman.
Changes are afoot. Robinson is rumoured to be very unhappy with what is going on and is secretly plotting changes of the top team. The relaunch was delayed at least three times and must now mean that Wilby is safe for a few months, but nevertheless, as we say, “approaches have been made” in the search for his successor. Other decisions also have to be made for the future: a number of staff have left and not been replaced. It is an odd situation which left a political magazine without a political editor for a relaunch. Donald Macintyre, Alice Miles and Jo Revell were among those to have been considered, but the money was not available to tempt any of them to leave their present jobs.
One regular contributor who walked out in protest at The Statesman line after September 11 was the Daily Mail columnist – and friend of Odone – Simon Heffer. As a pontificating Right-winger, his appearance in the NS was rather cuckoo-like in any case and he has now re-emerged on the other side of the fence, writing once more for The Spectator. This in itself should have alerted those with a suspicious mind, for all is not well in Doughty Street, either, and Heffer is known as a man who was once expected to take over the editorship there. He may look and sound like someone who was born middle-aged, but he is still only in his early forties and he is still very ambitious. He was also invited to return to the Telegraph stable, just as a writer for the time being, which is another cause perhaps for alarm bells in the editor’s office. Heffer may well have a more elevated chair in mind, but he is certainly owed by the Telegraph management: he was promised The Spectator editorship by Conrad Black and then denied it in favour of Frank Johnson. He took himself off in a huff, mollified only by the munificence of the Mail, but is ready now to return full-time to Telegraph Towers when the call comes. His enemies are already suggesting that his views are so far to the right that he is too much of a waistcoat-wearing fogey even for the readership of the Daily Mail, but this seems improbable.
Boris Johnson, the present incumbent of the editor’s chair, has occupied it rather uncomfortably since he was elected MP for Henley last year, on account of the fact that he had told The Spectator when he took over that he had no political ambitions, while some while afterwards – having dashed off from The Spectator summer party at which he was meant to be the host in order to go to the selection conference – he told the Tory burghers of Henley- on-Thames that he would resign his editorship if he won the seat. This anomaly is explained by his friends as an example of the way in which he tells people what he thinks they want to hear (“rather like Jeffrey Archer,” said one, “except that Boris doesn’t actually mean to tell fibs”.) It is quite possible for him to do both jobs; several of his distinguished predecessors have managed it with no difficulty, but he is in an awkward situation. He provides excellent publicity for the magazine and his management clearly recognises his value. There is even something called a “Boris Bobbler”, a piece of card with Johnson’s cut-out head on it, wearing a bobble-hat, which newsagents can display to advertise the product. In this respect his editorship has marked a distinct difference from that of his predecessor, Frank (no relation) Johnson who left precisely because of the commercial pressures from above. Certainly no one would ever have suggested a “Frank Bobbler”.
The magazine is more successful than it has ever been – boasting a circulation of 60,000 – and the only complaints are about the politics within the office. These have diminished considerably since Bruce Anderson’s departure and the appointment of Peter Oborne as the political correspondent; the latter marking the distinction from his predecessor by being an effective controversialist, which is exactly what is required. Compared to the New Statesman the contents are well-written and entertaining, if lacking a good-humoured quality for which The Spec used to be famed. But no sensible individual would look to it, any more than to the New Statesman, for any dependable advice about the state of politics of Left or Right. It could be a reflection of the shift in the last decade in the political templates that fashion the two major parties, or perhaps it is merely a matter of personalities, or maybe just another example of the flux in political journalism. Expect the unexpected should probably be the watchword.