Jeremy Paxman, a socialist? It’s there in red and white

The Daily Mail has highlighted Jeremy Paxman’s ‘renegade past’ through a letter he wrote … in 1982. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

Jeremy Paxman may have left Newsnight, but he certainly hasn’t left the news.

Rumours abounded of a possible run for mayor of London … Well, for a few minutes anyway. There was also the news that he is to front Channel 4’s general election coverage, but the story that really got the nation’s attention came when he revealed he was a “one-nation Tory”.

Oh, Paxo, say it ain’t so! Well, as chance would have it, the Daily Mail has discovered that it wasn’t necessarily so, after all.

The paper has unearthed a letter an idealistic Paxman wrote to the New Statesman in 1982, apparently in the hope of getting the editor’s job. In it, Comrade Paxman says: “I consider myself to be a socialist.” Which seems fairly cut and dried.

But wait, there’s more. “I believe in disarmament. I favour abolition of the House of Lords and its replacement by a properly accountable second chamber.” He goes on to say he has a loyalty to the concept of internationalism.

Perhaps predictably, the Mail claims this is a sign of Paxman’s “renegade past”. Pro-EU, anti-war, favoured an elected legislative ... Yep, he really was manning the barricades back then.