One of Britain’s last right-wing newspapers is to be bought up by the hard-left Trinity Mirror group, an organisation which helped found groups like the radical left ‘Hope not Hate’ and has provided a platform for some of the most heinous attacks on conservatism and Brexit.
The shock news comes after months of deliberation between the prospective buyers and Daily Express group owner Richard Desmond.
The Guardian reports:
Billionaire Richard Desmond is set to stop the presses on a 43-year publishing career with a £125m deal to sell his Express and Star newspapers and celebrity magazine OK! this week. Desmond has been in talks with Trinity Mirror, the publisher of the Labour-supporting Daily and Sunday Mirror titles, to offload his Brexit-backing titles since autumn.
Desmond is reportedly set to take a stake in the Trinity Mirror group in exchange for giving up his titles.
The Daily Express was founded in 1900 by Sir Arthur Pearson, a strong advocate of protectionism and tariff-based trade.
The first editorial of the paper stated: “[The Express] will be the organ of no political party nor the instrument of any social clique… Its editorial policy will be that of an honest Cabinet Minister… Our policy is patriotic; our policy is the British Empire.”
The Express is known for its campaigning bent, and retains to this day an image of the Express “Crusader” on its masthead.
The paper wrote of the image ahead of the Brexit vote:
The famous and symbolic Crusader who adorns our masthead will become the figurehead of the struggle to repatriate British sovereignty from a political project that has comprehensively failed people right across Europe.
It is unknown as to whether or not the Trinity Mirror group would retain this symbol of British history and sovereignty.
The deal would entrench Trinity Mirror as the largest publisher in the United Kingdom. The company owns the Daily and Sunday Mirror, the People, the Sunday Mail, the Daily Record, and 240 regional and local papers around the nation.
Trinity Mirror recently purchased the Local World group, adding another 83 titles to its stable.
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