Below is Andrew Neil’s sad but superb letter of resignation from The Spectator. Andrew is a legend of the media whose mentorship will be greatly missed but The Spectator Australia and Flat White readers can rest assured that the magazine and the website will continue in the magnificent tradition of editorial independence, provocative humour, and speaking truth to power that has been our hallmark for the last 15 years under Andrew’s guidance. Please keep on reading and subscribing – The Spectator Australia is going from strength to strength.
Editor-in-Chief, Rowan Dean
From Andrew Neil, Chairman of The Spectator.
It is with great sadness that I write to tell you I am resigning as Chairman of The Spectator, with immediate effect. I made it clear many months ago that I would step down when a new owner took over. That time has now come.
It has been my immense privilege these past twenty years to have served as your Chairman. During that time we have transformed the oldest magazine in the world, established in the age of the quill pen, into one of the most successful publications of the digital age, growing revenues rapidly across all digital platforms while still maintaining a very healthy print circulation.
In recent years The Spectator has never been more profitable, its reach never wider, at home and abroad (helped by our splendid Australian and American editions), and its journalism (under the peerless Fraser Nelson) never better nor more influential than it has been in its almost 200-year history.
It is a testament to the efforts of everybody in every department, past and present. You should be proud of what you have achieved. I am certainly proud of you.
A pertinent indicator of these achievements is that a magazine which was given a notional value of £20m two decades ago has been sold for around £100m today (I don’t know the exact price since, in a fit of pique after we stopped Redbird’s Arab-financed takeover, some of us were excluded from the sales process now coming to an end). But at a time when most ‘legacy’ publications are struggling to retain anything like their pre-digital worth, this is an unprecedented increase in value.
It is sad, even unfair, that nobody responsible for this success – that is, everybody at 22 Old Queen Street – will share in the upside. That is a result of the strange and surprising circumstances, definitely not of our making, we found ourselves 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 purgatory we’ve gone through these past 16 months and the peculiar nature of the sales process, in which those who’ve created the added value do not get to share in it.
It is a tribute to your professionalism and dedication that, throughout these troubled times, you never missed a beat. You continued to publish in print and online as normal. No reader could ever have guessed the internal turmoil we were going through – at one stage there were more external advisers crawling over us than we had employees – because you never deviated from our high standards. 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.
My greatest regret is that I have not been able to find you a new home guaranteed to nurture the unique chemistry of The Spectator, which makes it so special and successful. I’m sorry about that but the matter was taken out of my hands. We managed to stop the takeover by know-nothing Americans bankrolled by Arab potentates with their own agenda. But, after that, we did not have the power to choose our new owner or even influence who it was to be. No doubt the new proprietor will bring assets to the table, perhaps even bigger budgets. However you can have all the resources in the world but if you don’t understand what really makes The Spectator tick then they will be as naught. Your new bosses need to look and learn from you.
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. That is what I did. I cannot tell if the new owners will have the same reverence for editorial independence since they have not shared their thinking. Redbird didn’t care about who they sold us to and had no interest in demanding editorial safeguards. They just wanted to get shot of us for the highest price.
I wish you all the best for the future. I will miss you. You are such a talented bunch and good company too! Don’t hesitate to reach out if you ever think I can help you in your careers. Most of all I will miss walking through the door at 22 and seeing the smiling, welcoming faces of Lynne and Fiona at reception. Their unstinting, good-natured, solicitous presence was, for me, emblematic of the friendly, inclusive culture we created at Old Queen Street – a family as well as a team. I wish you all the luck in the world in preserving and enhancing it.
Your once and former Chairman, Andrew
10.ix.2024
