And yet, under Mr. Nelson, its Scottish editor who went to the University of Glasgow rather than Oxford, the magazine has tried to be more sober and balanced. It has published several tough articles about Mr. Johnson and the Cummings affair, including at least one commissioned by Ms. Wakefield, according to the writer, Anthony Horowitz, who is a critic of the government. And it published a piece by its Scotland editor, Alex Massie, that declared “Boris isn’t fit to lead.”
The Spectator sponsors a parliamentarian of the year award that has become a fixture in the political calendar. Mr. Nelson and his political reporters are well connected in political circles, and often break stories about the government. Current and former staff members say they doubt Mr. Nelson knew about Ms. Wakefield’s travels before publishing her column, though they have not discussed it with him.
“It’s a very serious professional operation pretending to be a bunch of champagne dilettantes,” said James Kirkup, a writer for the magazine. “If it were just a Tory mouthpiece, it wouldn’t be very interesting or successful.”
Still, the magazine’s ties to the government are an undeniable part of its cachet, and Mr. Johnson’s rascally spirit animates both. The two “share a degree of stylistic and cultural affinity, through their unflappable confidence and their propensity for mischief,” said Sophia Gaston, director of the British Foreign Policy Group and a fellow at the London School of Economics.
Not everyone is beguiled.
Simon Jenkins, a former editor of The Times of London, said the influence of weekly magazines was waning in general, with the emergence of digital rivals like UnHerd, a website that has published provocative pieces about the pandemic. “The peculiarity of The Spectator is, quite simply, Boris Johnson,” he said.
Professor Garton Ash said the magazine had become more of a “house journal for Brexiteers” since the 2016 referendum on European Union membership, even if it has held on to its irreverent tone and good writing.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/world/europe/dominic-cummings-spectator-magazine.html
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