Mail on Sunday columnist Rachel Johnson is set to leave the newspaper after being sacked by incoming editor Ted Verity.
Johnson’s last column will run this weekend, Press Gazette understands.
The first issue of the Mail on Sunday under Verity’s editorship will publish the week after, on 9 September.
Verity takes over from Geordie Greig, who has edited the Mail on Sunday for six years. Greig is leaving to edit the Daily Mail.
Mail editor Paul Dacre is stepping down from editing the daily title after 26 years to become editor-in-chief of publisher Associated Newspapers.
Johnson, a former editor of The Lady magazine, has written her Mail on Sunday column for six years – starting at the same time as Greig.
She has sometimes used it to comment on political decisions made by her brother Boris, who recently returned to his Daily Telegraph column after resigning as Foreign Secretary over Brexit negotiations.
Johnson told Press Gazette she met Verity for the first time today in a hotel, where he told her she was sacked as a columnist.
She said: “It was courteous of him to do it to my face and I wish him all the best. I completely understand he wants to put his own mark on the paper.”
The Guardian has reported that Johnson had been given a year-long contract extension by Greig just weeks earlier.
Soon after announcing he planned to step down from the Daily Mail, Dacre criticised Johnson’s column in a diary for the Spectator, saying it “gives banality a bad name”.
He said he was responding to her comments on the Today programme in which she was “rejoicing that the future Mail will be less inflammatory and more inclusive”.
Picture: Rachel Johnson
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