So Richard Desmond has jumped by donating cash to Ukip, according to Sky News. Will he expect his newspapers to jump as well?
In a sense, it doesn’t matter whether the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday actually endorse Ukip because, in effect, they have done so already.
The papers, in company with their owner, have fervently supported the two main Ukip policy planks for years: opposition to membership of the European Union and a halt to immigration.
In some respects, they were ahead of Ukip in that they espoused these reactionary political views years before the party gained any traction. The Express was anti-EU and anti-migrant while Nigel Farage was still bereft of widespread public support.
Desmond is hardly the first newspaper owner in history to donate money to a political party or to lend support to one overtly.
People who think this a right-wing game should remember that, in the 1960s, the Mirror Group loaned some of its senior executives to work with the Labour party during two election campaigns. In addition, its three titles - the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and The People - offered passionate support to Labour.
What is significant in this case is that Desmond has turned his back on overtures from the Conservative party. As I reported in the London Evening Standard last week, the prime minister spoke recently at a fund-raising dinner for Norwood, a leading Jewish charity of which Desmond is the president.
And, according to one of the guests, David Cameron laid it on thick by praising Desmond to the heavens as “the creator of large businesses and provider of thousands of jobs”.
But it didn’t move Desmond enough to support Cameron’s Tories. He believes the Ukip line is the best for Britain. There have been other indicators that have showed just how much the Express is intertwined with Ukip.
Desmond recently recruited former Express boss and Ukip peer Lord Stevens of Ludgate as his deputy chairman; and a former Daily Express political editor, Patrick O’Flynn, is both a Ukip MEP and regarded as Farage’s right-hand man.
The question is whether Express Newspapers’ backing will make any difference to the outcome of next year’s general election?
My hunch is that the Express and Star audiences are prime Ukip territory, so urging them to vote for the party is like preaching to the converted.
That is not, however, to negate the effect on the Tories of losing a long-time party-supporting national newspaper title prior to an election. It will undoubtedly hurt them at the margins. And those margins may well count in what is surely going to be a close election.
A switch away from the Tories by Express and Star readers might prove crucial enough to rob the Tories of victory. Therefore, Desmond’s decision may well have a political significance far beyond his £300,000 donation.
