Paul Dacre has departed his role as chair of the Daily Mail’s parent company, sources say, with the newspaper also no longer paying for his secretary and chauffeur.
Although Dacre stood down as editor of the Daily Mail in 2018, he remained on the payroll after being given the largely honorific positions of chair and editor-in-chief of parent company Associated Newspapers.
Two individuals with knowledge of the situation said this arrangement ended last week, with Dacre also losing access to his personal support staff. His departure from the company all but marks the end of Dacre’s 42-year-old association with the Daily Mail, which included a quarter of a century as editor.
One source suggested it was the company’s decision to let Dacre go after he had served as chair for exactly three years. The Daily Mail declined to comment, while Dacre could not be reached.
The departure clears the way for Dacre, 72, to make a new application to be chair of the media regulator Ofcom after he failed the interview process on the previous attempt despite the backing of Downing Street.
Dacre, one of the leading media campaigners for Brexit, was rarely seen in the Daily Mail newsroom after moving upstairs to an office on the executive floor of the company’s Northcliffe House headquarters in west London.
He used his position to pick battles with Geordie Greig, his Remain-supporting successor as Daily Mail editor. In one intervention Dacre wrote a public letter to the Financial Times accusing Greig of being “economic with the actualité” when it came to suggesting advertisers thought the newspaper had become too toxic. He also accused Greig of failing to pay enough respect to Dacre’s journalistic achievements.
News of Dacre’s departure comes after Daily Mail owner Viscount Rothermere, the great-grandson of the newspaper’s founder, announced he is close to concluding a complicated series of financial transactions related to the business. This will allow Rothermere to take the parent company DMGT off the stock market and have total private control over the Daily Mail and its sister titles such as MailOnline, Metro, and the i.
Dacre, who earned £2.7m in his final year as Daily Mail editor, is still the favourite to be appointed as chair of Ofcom, with the government re-running the appointment process for his benefit. The new job advert has been rewritten to favour a more confrontational candidate after Dacre was judged not to have met the original criteria during his first application.
If he is successful on the second attempt, he will help steer policy on issues from regulation of social media platforms such as Facebook, complaints about television news and oversight of postal services.
