 eight months in the role caused huge umbrage, particularly among those who knew that, in carrying out the changes that had such a disastrous effect on the Sunday circulation, Sands was merely obeying orders.
And their replacements have all been outsiders, except Matthew d'Ancona who now edits the Spectator but is chaperoned by Andrew Neil, the chief executive, and surrounded by the henchmen that Neil has imported from Scotland.
The Telegraph management has not endeared itself with the members of the old guard - or inspired their confidence - by the hesitant and lengthy selection process for editors. An editor has yet to be formally appointed at the Daily Telegraph, 12 months after Newland was sent packing; John Bryant, a Mail man appointed editor-in-chief of the Daily and Sunday, is filling in.
Meanwhile the remaining big Telegraph names have little involvement in the way things are run and are seldom even consulted. The old Telegraph group are very familial in the way they regard each other,
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| With Andrew Neil in charge of the Spectator, it is as if a much-loved club has been taken over by Peter de Savary |
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and these slights register. Could they leave? Certainly Lord Deedes will not be going anywhere else at the age of 93, and it is hard to imagine Moore moving. He has always been openly contemptuous of Murdoch and of the Mail, and throwing his lot in with either would be a humiliation.
Boris Johnson, however, certainly could and might leave. He is said to have made very clear that only the money has persuaded him to stay. Matthew Pritchett - Matt the cartoonist - could go anywhere and, as Newland's brother-in-law, he cannot have been too pleased by the treatment Newland received from Murdoch MacLennan, the Telegraph's chief executive.
Since her dismissal as editor of the Sunday Telegraph, Sarah Sands has reappeared at Northcliffe House in Kensington as a consultant with the Daily Mail. She is supposedly bound for the moment by a non-poaching clause but eventually the big danger for the Telegraph must be that Boris, or Matt, or both, might leave for the Mail; there are few people who cannot be  |
