Three years after it was shut down in the Daily Telegraph, the Mandrake diary column has been revived in The New European newspaper.
The much-feared political diary is back under editor Tim Walker, whose own views on Brexit are a match for TNE’s “for the 48 per cent” sales tag.
TNE editor Matt Kelly, says: “Tim Walker is Mandrake… and Mandrake is the best diary in newspapers, so I’m thrilled The New European has landed him.
“Tim is a massive opponent of Brexit, so it seems that, after a very long journey, Mandrake has finally discovered his natural home.”
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Walker said: “Matt is a great journalist and I have huge admiration for him and The New European, which has come a hell of a long way in a very short time.
“He has assembled an amazing roster of writers – his last signing before me was my old Observer colleague Andrew Adonis – so obviously I am proud to be joining.
“On Brexit, the paper shares my concerns and values and it is the one paper that will allow me to write without fear or favour about it.”
In the early Nineties, Walker left The Observer, where he edited the Pendennis diary, after Robert Maxwell invited him to write the diary for The European.
“I believed in the European Union as passionately then as I do now,” Walker said. “I feel a real sense of symmetry in my career to have gone from The European to The New European.”
Walker’s Mandrake column ran in the Telegraph for more than 12 years but he left it before it came out for Brexit and he has become a vocal critic of the newspaper’s strong stance on the issue.
Since leaving the Telegraph, Walker has written two general election diaries for the Daily Mirror and worked for six months on the Remain-supporting Mail on Sunday, where he broke the news that Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall were about to marry.
Walker also helped Gina Miller with her communications strategy during her successful High Court and Supreme Court challenges against the Government over Article 50.
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