{"id":3100,"date":"2026-04-08T17:20:44","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T17:20:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/3100\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T17:20:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T17:20:44","slug":"the-daily-telegraph-was-at-the-vanguard-of-brexit-now-its-going-to-be-run-from-berlin-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/3100\/","title":{"rendered":"The Daily Telegraph was at the vanguard of Brexit; now it\u2019s going to be run from Berlin \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1989 an ebullient 24-year-old reporter arrived in Brussels to cover European politics for the Daily Telegraph. Boris Johnson<\/a> had been fired by his previous employer, the Times, for fabricating a quote from his own godfather, the historian Colin Lucas, but the shamelessness that would propel him ever upwards in British public life was already fully formed.<\/p>\n

The Brussels posting made Johnson\u2019s career. A string of inventive stories only lightly tethered to facts on perfidious Eurocrats were sent to the Telegraph newsdesk. Every minor regulatory tweak became an assault on British institutions; one week it was sausages, the next it was prawn cocktail flavoured crisps.<\/p>\n

Over five years in the job, Johnson helped shape the tone of surging Euroscepticism<\/a> on the British right, with the Telegraph leading the charge that would culminate, eventually, in Brexit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last month Johnson, now a disgraced former prime minister but still a darling of the right and a columnist with the Daily Mail, met the next owner of the Telegraph. Three decades from the prawn cocktail scandal and nearly 10 years into the sunlit uplands of Brexit, the paper most closely associated with British nationalism is in the process of being acquired by, of all things, a German.<\/p>\n

Mathias D\u00f6pfner landed in London in late March on a charm offensive, seeking to put regulators\u2019 minds at rest about his proposed acquisition of Telegraph Media Group. According to news website Semafor, the Axel Springer boss also met senior figures on the political right, including conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and Reform\u2019s Nigel Farage. The political coalition the Telegraph helped create was being asked, in effect, to give its blessing to a new owner from the Continent.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Axel Springer buys Telegraph in \u00a3575m dealOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Most observers assume D\u00f6pfner will be successful and the Telegraph will become part of Berlin-headquartered Axel Springer, owner of a portfolio that includes Germany\u2019s Bild and Die Welt, as well as the digital outlets Politico and Business Insider. If the Brexiteers are feeling queasy about receiving their marching orders from Berlin, they are not showing it publicly.<\/p>\n

The sale, if concluded, will bring years of confusion and drift to an end. Previous owners, the Barclay family, lost control when an outstanding debt of \u00a31.2 billion was called in by Lloyds Bank in 2023. <\/p>\n

It looked for a time as though the new owners would be RedBird IMI, a US-Emirati consortium backed by Abu Dhabi\u2019s sheikh Mansour bin Zayed. But opposition, including from writers on the Telegraph\u2019s own pages, to letting the 171-year-old paper fall into Gulf state hands led the then conservative government to pass legislation banning foreign state entities from owning more than 15 per cent of British newspapers.<\/p>\n

For a while, it appeared that DMGT, owner of the Daily Mail and controlled by Lord Rothermere, would succeed. But that would have put more than 50 per cent of the UK national newspaper market in the hands of one company, a prospect the regulator declined to entertain. DMGT\u2019s bid stalled, its exclusivity lapsed, and Axel Springer moved in with a \u00a3575 million all cash offer that RedBird IMI, desperate to extricate itself from the saga, found irresistible.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Real-life \u2018Succession\u2019 ends: Lachlan Murdoch takes control and siblings take cashOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

D\u00f6pfner has wanted a Fleet Street title for some time. He bid for the Telegraph in 2004 and was in the running, again unsuccessfully, for the Financial Times in 2015. The acquisition of Politico in 2021 for about $1 billion was a statement of intent: Springer wants to be a serious player in English-language news publishing. The Telegraph is the crown jewel that has eluded him until now.<\/p>\n

Which raises the obvious question. Why is the broadly pro-EU Springer so keen to acquire not just the flagship of Euroscepticism but of outright Europhobia? <\/p>\n

The Telegraph has not exactly moderated its views since 2016. If anything, they have hardened considerably, the paper becoming a reliable organ of post-Brexit grievance culture, always alert for evidence that Brussels, Berlin and Paris have not forgiven Britain for leaving.<\/p>\n

D\u00f6pfner\u2019s answer, when pressed at an event in February, was studiously vague. \u201cWe are believers in centrist politics,\u201d he said. \u201cWe think that freedom of speech and freedom of expression is a fundamental part of that. So we should not narrow the corridor of public discussions.\u201d This seems to mean the editorial line is not his immediate concern. <\/p>\n

The Telegraph has a reasonably well-developed digital strategy and has been attempting to make inroads into North America for some time. D\u00f6pfner is plainly less interested in the apocryphal red-faced colonels from Tunbridge Wells who make up the Telegraph\u2019s core print readership, and more in the potential audience of younger online subscribers who share the Springer group\u2019s broadly centre-right, pro-market, transatlantic outlook. <\/p>\n

The ambition is to build a credible and authoritative presence on the anglophone centre-right that straddles both the Channel and the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

That sets the stage, at some point, for a direct confrontation with the other great conservative news conglomerate, Rupert Murdoch\u2019s News Corp. With the Succession-style legal dispute over the family trust now resolved to the 95-year-old\u2019s satisfaction and with Lachlan Murdoch installed as heir apparent, the coming battle for the soul of mainstream anglophone conservatism may prove the defining media story of the decade ahead.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, back in the Telegraph newsroom, there will surely be some interesting conversations. The paper that Boris Johnson helped build into the bible of Brexit, one invented story about bent bananas at a time, will soon be taking its editorial cues, however loosely defined, from a man in Berlin who believes passionately in European co-operation.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t mention the war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1989 an ebullient 24-year-old reporter arrived in Brussels to cover European politics for the Daily Telegraph. Boris…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3259,18,3260,3261,3262,3258],"class_list":{"0":"post-3100","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-berlin","8":"tag-axel-springer","9":"tag-berlin","10":"tag-boris-johnson","11":"tag-kemi-badenoch","12":"tag-nigel-farage","13":"tag-rupert-murdoch"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}