Veronica Wadley hits out at Standard’s new bosses

The former editor of the London Evening Standard has launched a scathing attack on the paper's new owner, the Russian billionaire and former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev, and her replacement, ex-Tatler editor Geordie Greig.

Veronica Wadley, who ran the Standard for seven years until Lebedev bought a controlling share of the paper in January for just £1, has hit out at the new regime's "Pravda-style" advertising campaign which sees the newspaper apologising for being negative and losing touch with its readership.
 
Wadley told the Guardian that the 'Sorry' campaign was "utterly humiliating" for the paper's staff and insulted readers' intelligence with its "Pravda-style promise of good news".
 
"London is laughing at this ludicrous campaign," she writes in today’s Guardian, alongside an interview with Greig in which he defends the advertisement. It is an attempt, he says, to overhaul the image of newspaper which had, under Wadley, become "negative, doom-laden, narrow, predictable, unsurprising".
 
Not surprisingly, Wadley disagrees, arguing that under her editorship the paper fought against corruption at City Hall and pushed for more accountability from politicians and police, among other campaigns. "Saying 'sorry' for the past smacks of a Soviet courtroom 'confession',” she writes. "'Sorry' has all the hallmarks of a KGB-style smear campaign."
 
Worse still for Wadley, who successfully threw the weight of the Standard behind Boris Johnson's run for the mayoralty, the Lebedev Standard has apparently turned against Boris - "one of the most popular politicians in the country", according to the former editor - and wants to reinstate Ken Livingstone (pictured above in a rare moment of conviviality with Wadley), "the discredited mayor who was voted out of office by London".
 
Wadley's final salvo is reserved for her successor: "As for Geordie Greig, well, Etonians have a history of collaborating with the KGB." ·