Boris
Johnson as editor of the Spectator in 2003. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty
Images
Quarantine article by Dominic Cummings' wife
reported to regulator
Public complain to Ipso about Mary Wakefield’s
Spectator column describing ‘emerging into London lockdown’
Jim
Waterson Media editor
Thu 28 May
2020 07.00 BST
The article
that appeared in the Spectator at the end of April painted a picture of a
family in turmoil during a pandemic, with a wife describing the anguish of
watching as her husband “lay doggo” with Covid-19 for 10 days before they
emerged from quarantine “into the almost comical uncertainty of London
lockdown”.
The column
by the magazine’s commissioning editor, Mary Wakefield, about life with her
husband, Dominic Cummings, was classic material for the high-Tory magazine:
confessional and full of personal details about individuals at the top of
British politics, earning the interest of Radio 4’s Today programme, which
asked her to read out key details.
Never mind
that the couple originally emerged from self-isolation in Durham, where they’d
travelled during lockdown. And that they had made a 60-mile round trip to a beauty
spot to check Cummings’ eyesight, too – both points that were absent from the
article.
The
Spectator, owned by the warring Barclay brothers, is at the centre of a web
connecting Cummings, Wakefield – and the prime minister himself.
On
Wednesday, a spokesperson for Ipso, the press regulator which covers the
Spectator, told the Guardian it had received two complaints from members of the
public about potential factual inaccuracies in the 1,000-word column by
Wakefield, which will mean the magazine will have to justify the article and
could result in it being required to publish a correction.
In the
process, the Spectator has found itself at the centre of yet another scandal at
the heart of Conservative politics. Despite its relatively niche status – its
80,000 print and digital subscribers make it a financial success but give it a
limited readership in the scale of modern media – its influence and connections
to the current government and wider media world are substantial.
Wakefield
herself is a fixture of the magazine, having first written for it two decades
ago when, just after university, she won a travel writing prize. The editor at
the time – and one of the judges – was an up-and-coming journalist and would-be
Tory MP called Boris Johnson, who was already setting about making the magazine
a byword for Westminster intrigue with his colourful love life and public
apologies during an era which saw the magazine dubbed the “Sextator” for his
and others’ antics.
The
daughter of a baronet, Wakefield grew up at Chillingham Castle – a large
country house deep in the Northumberland countryside, an hour’s drive north of
Newcastle. Her father, formerly employed by the auction house Christie’s, took
possession of the property in the early 1980s and painstakingly restored it
after it had been derelict for 50 years. The house is so grand that it was used
as the set for key scenes in the 1997 film Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett.
After
rising quickly up the Spectator’s ranks to become deputy editor, Wakefield has
remained a core part of the Spectator team, albeit with a limited public
profile. One former colleague praised her editing skills and suggested she had
a different political approach to her husband, describing her as a
“compassionate conservative” who is less involved in aggressive day-to-day
politics than the journalistic partners of other leading politicians. “She
isn’t Sarah Vine [wife of Michael Gove, and a Daily Mail columnist] ... she’s
just his wife, she loves him, she’s got her own thing, they’re very different,”
the former colleague said.
Wakefield,
45, has so far worked under three editors and stayed on when the current boss,
Fraser Nelson, was appointed in 2010, despite herself being viewed as a
potential candidate for the top job. “I think in a different world she might
have been the first female editor of the Spectator,” said the former colleague.
Her career
as a journalist at a politics-heavy magazine is perhaps ironic, given her
husband’s public insistence that he thinks little of the profession and
political reporters in particular.
However,
biographies of Cummings often overlook his brief journalism career at the
Spectator. In 2006 the future prime ministerial aide left his position as the
magazine’s online boss after he briefly published a cartoon on the Spectator’s
website of the prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, following the lead of
a Danish newspaper which had prompted an international row about the limits of
free speech.
“I didn’t
think it was a wise thing,” said the then acting editor Stuart Reid.
In another
sign of the magazine’s role at the centre of a web of political connections,
his departure was ultimately overseen by the Spectator chairman, Andrew Neil,
who continues to hold the role at the Barclay Brothers-owned magazine in
addition to his job as a BBC political interviewer.
When
Cummings was contacted by the Guardian in 2006 to clarify his role at the
Spectator and the decision to publish the drawing, he said: “I have zero
comment.” Fourteen years later, No 10 gave similar responses on his behalf to
requests for comment from Guardian reporters on whether he had travelled to
Durham during lockdown in late March.
Wakefield
has so far remained silent on the apparent lockdown breach, other than
favouriting a number of supportive tweets suggesting the media were
exaggerating the importance of the incident. A spokesperson for the Spectator,
which has carried comment pieces arguing that Cummings must be sacked, said:
“We are happy to let our coverage speak for itself.”
One of the
unanswered questions about the incident is why Cummings felt the need to check
his eyesight by driving to Barnard Castle, rather than ask his wife to take the
wheel on the long drive down the A1 back to London. Wakefield herself is known
to have driven: the award-winning travel writing piece that helped her get the
Spectator job describes her driving across Texas.
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