Sadiq Khan pleaded with Guardian bosses to ‘pause’ Observer sale
Exclusive: London mayor's letter, plus Democracy for Sale’s first ever live discussion
The world isn’t exactly brimming with good news right now, so I’m glad to be able to start today’s newsletter off on a positive note. Last week, I asked you, our readers, to help Democracy for Sale reach 700 paid subscribers by the end of this month.
We didn’t just reach our target, we smashed it. Thanks to every one of you who pays to support our work. It makes a *huge* difference.
And now the really good news. Thanks to your support, I am delighted to announce that Jenna Corderoy is now part of the Democracy for Sale team.
Jenna is an award-winning investigative reporter, an FOI ninja and one of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with. We’re so pleased to have her on board as we continue to go from strength to strength.
If you haven’t already - and can afford to - please do consider becoming a paid subscriber. With your help we can do even more work to fight dark money and government secrecy, and expose the growing threats to democracy and human rights.
Also, Thursday’s story - about how we defeated the secrecy surrounding the £800m research agency dreamt up by Dominic Cummings - was among our most popular pieces ever.
More than 24,000 people read it in barely 24 hours. It was also covered by Politico, James O’Brien on LBC and in this terrific piece in Prospect by David Allen Green.
As
says, “the only way this establishment thinking can be routed, and the elites disarmed, is by improving accountability and giving greater force to the FOI Act and the EIRs". We couldn’t agree more!Tomorrow is a big day in British media - the first appearance in print of the Observer under new owners Tortoise, following the newspaper’s sale by the Guardian Media Group.
As the FT reported this week, “Tortoise has promised to invest £25mn in the newspaper in total, with new funds coming from Gary Lubner, the South African businessman and Labour party donor, and Standard Investments, which is backed by US industrial group Standard Industries.”
Tortoise, led by former Times editor James Harding, “has promised to protect the editorial independence of the Observer, to maintain terms and conditions for staff and freelancers, and to nearly double the commissioning budget.”
But it’s also fair to say that GMG’s decision to offload the Observer has come in for plenty of criticism. Guardian staff went on strike over the deal and legal cases are in the offing.
is among a number of familiar Observer names who are not making the move across to Tortoise.Disquiet over the Guardian’s handling of the Observer sale extended all the way to the top of City Hall, London.
Democracy for Sale has obtained a letter sent by Sadiq Khan to the GMG chief executive Anna Bateson during the strikes in December calling for negotiations with Tortoise to be “paused” and for the bidding process to be opened up for other offers.
In the letter, released to us under FOI law, Khan praised the Observer as “a vital voice for liberal and progressive values for decades” but then went on to express his concern about the paper’s then proposed sale in pretty forthright terms.
Neither Bateson nor anybody else at GMG seems to have responded to Khan’s letter. The Guardian declined to comment in response to our questions.
The timing of Khan’s intervention - which has not been made public before now - is notable. The letter was sent on December 5, day two of the first strike by Guardian and Observer journalists in half a century. At the time, potential rival bids for the Observer were being widely mooted.
Shortly after Khan’s letter was sent GMG announced that it had agreed to sell the Observer to Tortoise, in a deal that included a £5 million investment from the Scott Trust, the Guardian’s owner.
Khan and the Guardian have had a close relationship. The paper has often endorsed him, and Khan returned the favour, granting then newish Guardian editor Kath Viner a sit down interview in 2017. That seems unlikely to happen again anytime soon.
The full text of Khan’s letter can be found here.
I wanted to tell you about an exciting first for Democracy for Sale.
This Thursday (May 1) at 1800 GMT, we’ll be hosting our first ever live discussion. I’ll be speaking with
about her new book, Anywhere But Here: How Britain’s Broken Asylum System Fails Us All.A journalist and former diplomat who also served as a Home Office press officer, Kelly exposes the deep flaws in the UK’s asylum process—a system that often delivers huge profits for a few companies while even basic information is withheld from the public.
Anywhere But Here shines a light on the impact of Britain’s broken asylum system not just on refugees, but on society as a whole. Join us for what promises to be a lively and interesting discussion. The link for the event is here. Do come along!
Finally, a recommendation: Harry Shukman’s Guardian long-read, about infiltrating Britain’s far-right. For a year, Harry became ‘Chris’, ingratiating himself with neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers and extremist political parties.
It’s a remarkable read, delving into everything from the alienation that often drives young men into the arms of the far-right to the reemergence of ‘race science’ (a topic Quinn Slobodian talked about in our recent interview.)
But what really struck me reading Shukman’s piece was the crucial role that dark money plays in fueling the rise of the far-right.
At a neo-Nazi conference in Tallinn, Estonia, Shukman meets a group funded by an American investor who made his fortune in tech. The cash comes through a limited liability registered in the US “in a state with helpful privacy laws”. We have been warned….