Over the past few days, Britain has been treated to a fresh media spectacle, marking a new low in the slow decline of an autonomous press. The Daily Telegraph, which has employed Boris Johnson off and on for over 30 years, and currently pays him £275,000 a year as a columnist, has put its full editorial and journalistic resource behind his bid to become leader of the Conservative Party, and therefore Prime Minister.
Beside the constant trickle of op-eds praising his character and political judgement, the paper published an opinion poll on the morning of his leadership campaign launch, predicting he would win a majority of 140 in a general election (since trashed by polling experts), and has converted its front page into a type of campaign leaflet, full of flattering photos and slogans.
At best, this is distasteful and creepy. But is it dangerous? On its own, it is not substantially different from the way the newspapers fell behind Tony Blair in the late 1990s and early 2000s, or The Daily Mail briefly worked for Theresa May between 2016-17. But its broader context points to something more worrying than those precedents, with immediate echoes of what’s taking place on the other side of the Atlantic. The sound of journalists being booed at Johnson’s launch event should be enough to raise concerns of something Trumpian going on.
