Andrew Neil

What’s next for the Murdoch empire?

19 min listen

Rupert Murdoch stepped down as chairman of News Corp and Fox News this week. But is this really the end of Murdoch’s career? ‘I can guarantee you that I will be involved every day in the contest of ideas’, he wrote in a statement. And what will the media tycoon’s legacy be? James Heale speaks

What did Succession get right about the Murdoch empire?

24 min listen

Andrew Neil, The Spectator‘s chairman and super fan of the HBO show, Succession, joins this episode to talk to Freddy about where the show overlapped with the real life media empire of Rupert Murdoch, who has his own problems of succession to think about. This conversation was originally filmed as an episode of ‘The View from 22’

David Dimbleby turns out to be a bit of a closet republican

In Keep Talking, David Dimbleby takes us through a gentle romp of a stellar, unrivalled broadcasting career spanning, incredibly, 70 years. There are no great revelations (even the name of the BBC boss who tried to fire him from Question Time is withheld), no dramatic insights to make us rethink well-known events, no ponderous thoughts

A statement from the chairman of The Spectator

In common with thousands of companies up and down the country, The Spectator magazine group availed itself of government funds to furlough some of its staff during the Covid crisis. We feared the impact of Covid on our finances, especially on our cash flow, as parts of our business slowed or ground to a halt,

A cure for Christmas stress in Sweden

We’ve all been there, I’m sure. You work your pan off to get everything done in time. You count down the days until you can break out of the madhouse of pre-Christmas London. Then you’re brought down by the dreaded lurgy. I was all for cancelling our travel plans and spending Christmas under the duvet.

Andrew Neil: Letter from Australia

No rest for the wicked. We touch down before dawn in Sydney after a 22-hour flight and by 7 a.m. I’m live on radio 2GB with Alan Jones. I’m aware talk radio is big in Australia — as you’d expect in a country full of refreshingly forthright people — and Mr Jones’s breakfast show is one

Andrew Neil’s eulogy for Sir Alastair Burnet

A memorial service was held today for Sir Alastair Burnet at St Martins-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square. Hundreds of family, friends and colleagues from the worlds of politics, print journalism, broadcasting and horse racing turned out to pay their respects and celebrate his life. Andrew Neil gave the eulogy along with Sir David Nicholas, Alastair’s editor

Sir Alastair Burnet, 1928-2012

It is with much sadness and regret that I have been asked by family and friends to announce the death of Sir Alastair Burnet. He passed away peacefully in the middle of the night at the Beatrice Place Nursing Home in Kensington, where he was being cared for after suffering several strokes. He was 84.

Blair’s deal with Murdoch

The below is an extract from Andrew Neil’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, published today. You can read the whole document here. ‘How we treat Rupert Murdoch’s media interests when in power,’ Mr Blair told me in 1996, a year before he became Prime Minister ‘will depend on how his newspapers treat the Labour party

The full story on NHS spending

I make no apologies for returning to government spending on health. The Tory promise in the election to ring-fence health spending and increase it in real terms every year even during a period of public spending cuts was distinctive and much-touted during the 2010 election campaign. A quick recap: during my extended interview with Health

Why work experience matters more than ever

In my recent BBC2 documentary, Posh & Posher, I explained how networking and contacts played a crucial role in giving those with the right connections an early leg up in their careers. Internships and work experience are proving increasingly crucial to opening doors and opportunities in later life. Many have expressed the view that the best

The fall of the meritocracy

I caught the figure strolling towards me out the corner of my eye. At first I thought I was mistaken. Then it nearly took my breath away. I was standing in the impressive wooden-beamed assembly hall of Paisley Grammar, where I’d gathered at the start of each school day many years before, silent and smartly

The New Republicans

After the Tea Party’s election success, the American right has a mandate to fight for a smaller state ‘I am not a witch.’ Now that’s not something you hear very often from a politician. But Christine O’Donnell, Tea Party darling and Republican candidate in Delaware for the US Senate, felt the need to say these

Brown let the dogs out

When you keep a kennel of attack dogs then I guess you can’t entirely claim ignorance or absence of responsibility when one of them bites several passers by. That explains why Gordon Brown’s apologetic non-apology for the attempted muckraking of Damian McBride has failed to satisfy not just the Tories but many Labour supporters too.

The shape of things to come | 26 March 2009

Today the Daily Politics stages the battle of the bloggers — on the New Labour left, Dolly Draper, on the libertarian right, Guido Fawkes — and we do so on a day when we have a compelling example of how the internet is re-shaping our media and politics. After Gordon Brown delivered his speech to

Thoughts from abroad, with two days to go…

…and assuming an Obama victory. If McCain wins expect very different thoughts on Wednesday morning! 1) That part of the world which does not include the USA is pretty much a one-party state for Obama and if he fails to win there will be much international wailing and gnashing of teeth at the “stupid, racist

The post-conference landscape

The party conference season is over and we’re back to business as usual — except that in the current financial and economic turmoil, political business is anything but normal.   Last night the US Senate voted for the Bush bailout plan by a large majority, which should keep the markets happy until the House of