The FT can no longer be described as a British newspaper

Ever since he became editor of The Spectator, which must be about five years ago, Boris Johnson has been urging me to write a column about the Financial Times. It is a subject which seems to drive him towards apoplexy. As Boris sees it, the FT is run by leftist énarques whose hearts are very far from the businessman struggling with cashflow problems in Nuneaton or, as it might be, Henley. It is a newspaper for sharp-suited Eurocrats and fat cats on the early morning shuttle to Brussels or Milan, not the hardworking capitalist stuck in his dingy office with the VAT man menacing outside the door.

I am sure he is right. And yet until now I have turned a deaf ear to his diatribes. Perhaps I felt that for all its smugness and dullness and inability to relate to the problems of ordinary businessmen, the Financial Times had at any rate not dumbed down. In a world in which David Beckham and Elizabeth Hurley were regular visitors to the front pages of other quality newspapers, the ‘Pink ’Un’ still ploughed its time-worn furrow of seriousness, offering, for example, celebrity-free foreign coverage. There was even more to it than that. The FT still largely adheres to an old-fashioned belief in objective news. I don’t trust the Independent’s coverage of Iraq (though I share its anti-war sentiments) or the (pro-Blair) political coverage of the Times, but I still mostly trust the FT, except sometimes on the European Union. It has other virtues, such as John Lloyd’s excellent Saturday magazine. Its second section, with its detailed company reports, remains a wonder of journalism.

So I have stayed my hand. The Financial Times still has much to recommend it. (I suppose I should here declare an interest as someone helping to plan an upmarket newspaper, though I hardly think it will compete with the FT.)