Telegraph Pushes Pro-EU 'Expat' Article... Written By EU-Paid 'Journalist'

The Daily Telegraph – once the home of British conservatism and Euroscepticism – has published an article entitled: “Expats are being frozen out on Europe” written by a journalist who has undisclosed financial links to the European Parliament and European Commission.

Published on Thursday, 11th February, the article states: “If we vote “leave”, we will be denying young people the right to free movement for all kinds of reasons. The Swiss (not in the EU and often cited as a model by the “leave” campaign) have recently had their rights to take part in EU research and Erasmus programmes drastically curtailed. Their newspapers are full of young people complaining about this.

Alex Taylor, the author, adds: “If Britain does withdraw from the EU, two million of us will be stranded and no longer have equal rights as the citizens of the countries we live in – overnight. Other EU countries are not going to grant hundreds of thousands of us nationality. We are UK citizens and yet very proud to be Europeans, our lives having been greatly enhanced through free movement. All of a sudden it seems more than likely that we will lose a lot of our rights, and find ourselves in a legislative limbo. It would be nice if someone would mention us!”

But his personal status as a migrant to Europe, he adds, stems not from his financial interest in serving the European Union, as he reveals in small print on his website. Rather, he claims .”I left the UK for France at the beginning of the 80s after the winter of discontent. I also had more personal reasons to move. Being gay I didn’t want to live my life in Britain, which at the time had Section 28, banning any promotion of homosexuality in public. I moved to a country which was at the time much more open.”

Now, despite spurning Britain in the 80s over politics, Mr. Taylor wants the country to remain in the European Union so that he might personally benefit. Despite having decades to apply for French citizenship, it appears he has not, and is worried that his choice to live in France might be revoked if Britain leaves the European Union – an unlikely outcome of Brexit.

On his website, Mr. Taylor lists “the European Commission and Parliament” as some of his “clients”. His logo is an EU flag, and his picture on his website is him, hugging an EU flag.

The Telegraph simply states of Mr. Taylor: “Alex Taylor has been producing and presenting programmes about Europe for French radio and TV for the last 30 years” failing to disclose his vested interests.