Peter Oborne, the award-winning journalist who left the Telegraph over its commercial policies, is to return to the Daily Mail with a new weekly political column starting this autumn.
The author who criticised the Telegraph over its failure to report on stories critical of advertisers will also write a weekly column in Middle East Eye, which is edited by former Guardian chief foreign leader writer David Hearst, and is completing a book on British Islam.
“I am thrilled to be going to the Mail,” said Oborne. “I have greatly missed writing a political column and I am looking forward to starting once again for the Daily Mail in the autumn. I have also started a regular column for Middle East Eye.”
Oborne was chief political columnist at the Mail until he joined the Telegraph in 2010. He is also a familiar face for British TV viewers from his work on current affairs shows such as Dispatches and is associate editor of the Spectator.
In an article announcing his resignation in February, he accused the Telegraph of committing a “fraud on readers” by failing to cover stories such as the role of HSBC in helping clients dodge taxes and conceal millions of dollars of assets.
The Telegraph was one of the few outlets not to cover the story in detail following revelations in the Guardian based on files from the bank’s Swiss arm.
Oborne also highlighted the newspaper’s coverage of recent protests in Hong Kong and a feature about Cunard’s Queen Mary II liner as examples of commercial considerations skewing editorial decisions.
“There are great issues here. They go to the heart of our democracy, and can no longer be ignored,” he wrote on the Open Democracy website.
