Telegraph Gets Instant Karma

You have to be of A Certain Age to remember John Lennon’s early solo single Instant Karma! The idea behind the title and lyric was that Karma might happen more or less immediately. It is a concept with which the editorial staff at the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph may not yet be familiar, but that is all about to change. As may their presence at the paper.

Now then, what am  bid? Chris Evans, claims to be a newspaper editor ... now come on Sir, this is not a fire sale ... oh hang on a minute, actually, it is

While most of our free and fearless press were sneering dismissively at the Duke of Sussex having his day in court, news had already been broken by the Murdoch Times that “Lloyds Banking Group has threatened to put the owner of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph into administration after the breakdown of talks with the Barclay family, the owner of the newspapers”.

Do go on. “Lloyds inherited a series of loans to the Barclay family after the takeover of Bank of Scotland in the midst of the financial crisis. It is understood that the bank has written down the value of the loans in recent years. A source said that after years of negotiations the bank felt it was reaching ‘the end of the road’ in the relationship”. There was more.

“Alongside the Telegraph Media Group and the Spectator magazine, the Barclay family own Very, the online retail business”. So is it a bundle? Not just the Telegraph titles, but also the increasingly alt-right Spectator magazine? Along with a little jeopardy on the side for former Murdoch editor Andrew Neil, the mag’s chairman? It seems it is. And today, the Guardian had yet more.

“The Daily and Sunday Telegraph are to be put up for sale in an auction after the Barclay family lost control of their crown jewel media assets in a bitter row with the newspaper group’s lender … Lloyds Banking Group is understood to have appointed AlixPartners as the official receiver to seize the shares owned by the Barclay family in the holding company that ultimately controls the national newspapers and the Spectator magazine”. Tell us more.

“According to multiple sources the bank, which has taken the action after becoming frustrated at the repayment of a loan amounting to hundreds of millions of pounds, intends to remove Barclay family-appointed board members and move to auction off the Telegraph titles and Spectator”.

Whatever anyone is prepared to pay for the Tel and Speccy, the sad reality about the former is that, over the 19 years since the Barclays bought it, the former paper of record has been first turned into a broadsheet Mail (hence the Private Eye jibe of Maily Telegraph) and later nothing better than a broadsheet Express. The content and staff have been hollowed out.

All this has occurred as profits continue to be chased and the Tel increasingly trades on its brand and past reputation. The old demarcation between news and comment vanished long ago, and thus conditions were ripe for the kind of alleged “story” for which the Instant Karma so swiftly emerged.

“Exactly how much of your salary bankrolls the welfare state … Britain isn’t working - calculate what it’s costing you” was the headline last Thursday, as a supposedly reputable newspaper exhumed the Nazi-era idea of the idle and disabled weighing down on all those decent and hardworking people. The article enjoyed the endorsement of the Tel’s editor Chris Evans, thereby confirming that he was, and remains, a total and absolute shit.

“Of the 5.2 million people claiming out-of-work benefits, roughly 3.7 million have been granted indefinite exemptions from finding a job, following a surge in claims of mental health issues and joint pain during the pandemic, it emerged last week” readers were told. So whose press release is this?

As if you need to ask. “On top of this, the controversial decision to maintain the state pension triple lock is estimated to cost taxpayers £1,000 each over the next four years, according to calculations by the TaxPayers’ Alliance, a think tank”. Think tank my arse. The so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance is an Astroturf lobby group. And this is just plain old-fashioned hate speech.

That is confirmed by the line “It raises the question, just how much of our hard-won salaries are spent on the benefits of those who do not work? With the calculator below, Telegraph Money can now reveal how much of your salary goes towards bankrolling the welfare state”. And then Instant Karma hit Evans, his Sunday editor Allister Heath, Spectator chairman Andrew Neil, and the magazine’s supremely disingenuous editor Fraser Nelson.

They are also up for sale. It would be a terrible pity if nobody wanted to buy.

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