Labour comes out against Emirati bid for Telegraph

This is a big week for the future of the British press with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the House of Lords both due to take decisions on the RedBird bid for the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator. Lucy Frazer, the Culture Secretary, will respond to reports she has been given looking at competitive issues. There are none. The real concern is about whether this deal is funded by the government of the United Arab Emirates.

It is majority-financed by International Media Investments (IMI) which RedBird says is a private entity that happens to be run by Sheikh Mansour, an Emirati royal and its Deputy Prime Minister, but acting in a private capacity. To a great many others, this is nonsense: it looks like the UAE trying to be the first autocratic government in the world to buy a national newspaper.

“The risk is the newspapers and magazines would be seen as tools of influence for foreign governments.”

Spectator Editor Fraser Nelson tells #R4Today ‘no autocracy has managed to buy a newspaper in a democracy’, as a UAE-backed bid hopes to buy The Telegraph and The Spectator. pic.twitter.com/h882drh1UF

— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) March 11, 2024

Is this credible? The Tory government has passed no comment but I’ve just spoken to Thangam Debbonaire the Shadow Culture Secretary, who has said this is clear-cut.

‘My view – and the view of the Labour party – is that foreign governments should not own national newspapers. This is a bid by a foreign power, funded by the deputy Prime Minister of the UAE, and as such this bid should not pass. Labour is unequivocal and unambiguous on this point: ownership by a foreign power is incompatible with press freedom, which is essential in a democracy.’

So it seems that a Labour government would block the bid. It’s a clearer position than we have had from the Tories, who are limited in what they can say by the official referral process. MPs and peers have no such constraints so it will be interesting to see how the debate goes when the Lords discusses this – and the Stowell amendment – later this week.