There is a tendency in some leftish quarters to quietly enjoy the agonies of the Telegraph and the Spectator as they contemplate the possibility of being owned by a fund controlled by the United Arab Emirates. It’s a bit rich, this line of thinking goes, for the titles – and others with hopes of bagging the loose assets – to be fussy about ownership or the operation of a free market.
Aren’t they part of the unlovely over-representation in UK medialand of non-doms and foreign and domestic billionaires? If the UAE is deemed a suitable owner of Manchester City and, possibly, a slice of Sizewell C, why not trust its assurances that it’ll be a passive operator in the UK and won’t try to throttle free expression as it does at home?
