Lord Lebedev, the proprietor of The Evening Standard, has been using the paper to wage his own ‘major inquiry’ into free speech. ‘I’ve donned my body armour and I am ready,’ he wrote in an article launching the campaign.
One of Lebedev’s free-speech interviewees was Azealia Banks, the ranty singer. According to Lord Leb, Banks occupies ‘an increasingly rarefied place in the pop pantheon: that of a woman who says it like it is.’
She certainly made good on that claim. In a post-interview social media tirade she called Lebedev by turns ‘a homosexual,’ ‘a Gay Party Boy,’ ‘Evegghead cornball’ and a ‘wannabe James Bond but really serving nothing more than Austin Powers.’
In this interests of cutting to the chase, I asked Lebedev – a man who Private Eye routinely refers to as ‘two beards’ – whether there is any substance to her claims. ’OMG AZEALIA YOU BLEW MY F**ING COVER!!!’ he replies.
Banks also claimed Lord Lebedev, 43, was ‘getting a f**king liquid cheek lift on the Zoom call.’ ‘He was really in there getting the Lady Gaga Born This Way elf style pointy collagen cheek injections during the call,’ she said.
To this, Lebedev impishly responds: ‘She may be interested to know I was also getting penis enlargement injections out of camera shot.’
How’s that for free speech in action? Baron Lebedev, of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond on Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation, to give him his full title, seems to get kick out of being mocked by famous people. Despite Azaelia Banks’s rude rant, he says about the singer: ‘She answered pretty much every question I had, and even ones I didn’t… I find it interesting how she seems to have transcended cancel culture, by being so facetious that people can’t keep up with her gibberish spoken at great speed. She’s outplayed cancel culture at its own game.’
Has Banks’ kickback not put him off? ‘There were no surprises – on the call, at least. She was consistent with what I expected from her, which was a rollercoaster.’
In his interview with Banks, the pair discuss guns, Trump’s 2024 presidential bid and big tech. Lebedev is generally very good at enlisting celebrities to help support his newspaper’s campaigns and charitable endeavours: Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson once joined him for a sleepover to raise awareness of homeless veterans, and singer Elton John once shaved off Lebedev’s beard for Comic Relief.
Usually the slebs speak kindly about Lebedev in return for the exposure. But Banks didn’t seem to appreciate being weaponised in his war on cancel culture: ‘No real politician on todays date with two major wars happening would embarrass themselves by dragging up some LATE 2016 ass discourse about “cancel culture,”’ she said.
But Lebedev seems almost touchingly committed to his cause célèbre.
‘Fear has made people think twice before they speak their minds. Social media has become a space that enables extreme abuse as well, because faced with the risk of being sued, sacked and stung, many no longer feel comfortable emitting a basic opinion, even in a private space. People don’t know what they can and can’t say anymore. Though the narrative around cancel culture peaked some years ago, it still hangs like a dark cloud and permeates the culture at large. At The Standard, we want to see the tide turning.’
Although he has many causes — Londoners will have read about his unrelenting desire to save the elephants — his passion for free speech is clear. In 2012, he arrived at the Leveson inquiry carrying with him copies of Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis and John Milton’s Areopagitica, a speech made in 1644 on the liberty of unlicensed printing. At the time he said: ‘I have spent over £75m of Lebedev money over the last three years funding the Evening Standard and the Independent, so it’s really expensive, it’s a really expensive element of democracy that needs to be preserved at all costs.”
Lebedev, who also owns the online-only The Independent, bought the Evening Standard with his oligarch father, Alexander, in 2009. Alexander Lebedev, the former KGB intelligence officer, is no longer involved in the titles.
Lebedev’s other major shareholder in The Independent is Sultan Mohamed Abuljadayel, an investor from Saudi Arabia.
I ask Lord Lebedev what he thinks is the biggest threat to free speech. ‘I would say self-censorship. It’s almost worse than censorship because we enforce it upon ourselves. And it’s far more widespread because it filters into the private sphere, beyond the court of public opinion. The fear of being singled out is paralysing, and we now live in a society where that is too often the norm.’
Cancel culture, he says, ‘has existed since forever: Ancient Rome had damnatio memoriae, a practice by which they would erase the memory of an individual. With our enquiry at the Standard, we’ve sought to explore how that phenomenon has creeped back into existence. I’ve just noticed in the past ten years, how this has made people less joyful. People have less fun. Friends who used to be exuberant and confident are now less open. We have lost our mojo.’
Lebedev himself seems to have regained his mojo somewhat. He has just hosted his beloved theatre awards at Claridges for the first time since the pandemic. In his publication’s post- event coverage he was, as is customary, pictured in a comically large number of the photographs from the night, beaming alongside his famous friends, from Elton John to Sir Ian McKellen, with whom he owns a pub.
And he has continued to press on with those free speech interviews, the most recent of which was another front-pager with neuroscientist philosopher Sam Harris. Has Banks’ kickback not put him off? ‘She is outrageous and, sometimes, outrageously funny,’ he says of Banks. ‘There were certainly some lighter moments during the interview, but there were no surprises. She was consistent with what I expected from her, which was a rollercoaster.’
Banks, meanwhile, has accused him of ‘relishing each and every opportunity to throw shade at trans women under the guise of “free speech”.
‘You and all of the idiots making censorship and cancel culture seem like this tyrannical thing is because you simply want the right to spew pretentious and irrelevant shit about other adult’s sex lives, when you cannot even live truly in your own,’ she raged.
Lebedev, you sense, will no doubt just be pleased that someone is talking about his campaign. And about him. It’s a good job he donned that body armour.
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