UPDATE (21/9/2015): Brian Sewell has died aged 84 after suffering from cancer for a year.
London Evening Standard art critic Brian Sewell believes the paper is in danger of becoming a “Boris newssheet”.
Sewell, who has been at the Standard for 29 years, has questioned whether the paper would give as much exposure to a Labour mayor.
“It keeps us all informed of Boris and his performances,” he said.
“Personally, I think there is a danger that it becomes Boris's newspaper – his newssheet. There is so much about Boris that one wonders, one wonders…”
Although Sewell is renowned as an art critic, he told Press Gazette that he would much rather have kept his old political column – stripped from him by former editor, “the dreadful Veronica Wadley” as he calls her – than his art column.
Sewell won an Orwell Prize for his political column and said: “I feel as strongly about it as ever.”
Asked about the current state of the Standard, Sewell said: “My only problem with it is it is largely run by young and inexperienced people.
“And it doesn’t have any authority. There was a time when Members of Parliament were scared of the paper – what will the Evening Standard headline be if we do this? – but that's going back 20 years or so.
“No longer does it have that sort of clout.”
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