Media 5 July 2019 SHOCK as Telegraph endorses its own columnist Boris Johnson for Tory leader It’s perfectly normal for a newspaper to pay the next prime minister £275,000 a year to endorse him. Twitter Batting for Columnist. Sign UpGet the New Statesman\'s Morning Call email. Sign-up They say politics these days is unpredictable but they never prepared us for this EARTHQUAKE. The Daily Telegraph – yes, the same Telegraph that is more of a parish newsletter churning out press releases for Boris Johnson’s campaign team than an actual newspaper – has published its endorsement for the Tory leadership candidate… Boris Johnson! Nicking Donald Trump’s self-styled nickname, it has called Johnson “Mr Brexit” in a leader exhorting readers to “elect him PM and give him a chance to deliver it”. Because it’s perfectly normal in a liberal democracy for one of the main newspapers to pay the next prime minister £275,000 a year to write columns and then endorse him to run the country. Accompanied by an even more perfectly normal frontpage, which would have made Pravda’s editors blush: › Stranger Things 3 deals with the pleasure and pain of adolescence I'm a mole, innit.