Mail editor ousted

Delighted to read that Geordie Greig has stepped down as editor of the Daily Mail after only three years.

To put this in perspective, his predecessor Paul Dacre was editor for 26 years. Before that another Fleet Street legend, Sir David English, was editor for 21.

English took over in 1971 which was around the time I started reading the Mail, which was just starting on its journey to becoming Britain’s most successful newspaper, something few envisaged in the late Sixties when it was a distant rival to The Sun, Mirror and Express.

In July however, having been a reader for 50 years, I wrote:

I have rather given up reading the Mail on a daily basis because I am fed up reading the paper's remorseless criticism of Boris.

I don't know why the paper has such animus towards the PM but as someone who previously read the Mail every day for 50 years it hasn't gone unnoticed.

Whether I ever return as a regular reader remains to be seen but under the current editor possibly not.

Ironically it was under Greig, a former editor of Tatler, that the print edition finally overtook The Sun to become the UK’s bestselling newspaper.

However, in an era of dramatically falling newspaper sales this was not the achievement it might have been in previous decades.

Today the real commercial power lies with MailOnline and the millions of global readers.

To be clear, I have no problem with a right-leaning newspaper criticising a right-leaning government or prime minister, especially if it’s well deserved, but some of the attacks felt personal.

Like Boris, Greig went to Eton and Oxford but Johnson is three years younger than Greig so whether their paths crossed during those years I don’t know.

Unlike Boris (and previous editor Paul Dacre) Greig is a Remainer but that still doesn’t explain why the Mail - unlike its sister paper the Mail on Sunday - was so hostile to the PM.

Greig’s replacement is Ted Verity, editor of the Mail on Sunday, who will take charge of both papers.

Time will tell but as a loyal and unapologetic reader of the daily paper I shall be keeping my fingers crossed that I have got my paper back.

Reading between the lines, I can’t be the only one who feels that way.