Peter Oborne

Peter Alan Oborne (born 11 July 1957) is a British journalist and broadcaster. He is the former chief political commentator of The Daily Telegraph, from which he resigned in early 2015. He is author of The Rise of Political Lying, The Triumph of the Political Class, and The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism, and along with Frances Weaver of the pamphlet Guilty Men. He writes a political column for Middle East Eye and a diary column for Byline Times.

Oborne served as a commissioner for the Citizens Commission on Islam, Participation and Public Life. He won the Press Awards Columnist of the Year in 2012 and again in 2016.

Quotes

• Yet the case against [Andy] Coulson today is considerably graver than the case against Campbell. As deputy editor and then editor of the News of the World, he was presiding over what can only be described as a flourishing criminal concern.
  Cameron has privately remarked of Coulson that everyone deserves a second chance. Yet it is surely unwise to treat high political office as a version of a community rehabilitation scheme. Cameron may well win next month's election. He will be making an extremely worrying statement about the type of government he plans to lead if he allows Coulson anywhere near Downing Street.
  • "Does David Cameron really need this tainted man beside him?" The Observer (4 April 2010)
  • Coulson was jailed for 18 months in July 2014 for conspiracy to intercept voicemails while editor of the News of the World. David Cameron apologised for formerly employing Coulson while Leader of the Opposition and Prime Minister.

• The phone hacking affair has displayed the Prime Minister [David Cameron] at his worst – a shallow, amoral, conniving careerist, determined to secure high office at any cost.
  • "Prime Minister and his gang haven’t learnt their lesson" The Telegraph (26 June 2014)

• Oscar Wilde once wrote that to lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune, but to lose two looked like carelessness. For the Tories to lose two prime ministers in the space of three months shows, more than carelessness, that they are out of control. The government is already on its fourth finance minister this year; one of them, Kwasi Kwarteng, crashed the pound and ruined the party’s reputation for good financial management.
  Like the Republicans in the United States, the Conservatives are detached from reality. In a generation, they have become a party of monomaniacs, incompetents and ideologues. Like a thoroughbred that has run one race too many, it needs putting out to grass. After a decade or two in the wilderness, perhaps the party can recover — though let’s not rule out the possibility it is finished once and for all.
  That’s still a way off. In the wake of Ms. Truss’s resignation, the party announced plans to hold another leadership election, its second in three months. As with the contests that anointed Boris Johnson and Ms. Truss as prime minister, the choice will be made jointly by Tory lawmakers and party members. Even if, by some fluke, a half decent candidate won, it would not help their fortunes. The party is so riven by internal feuds, personal hatred and ideological disagreements that it has become ungovernable.
  • "Britain Is a Global Laughingstock, and It’s Not Just Liz Truss’s Fault" The New York Times (21 October 2022)

• [Tony] Blair dedicated himself to cultivating the right wing press. I was really shocked. [...] I would be invited quite often into Downing Street just to speak to the prime minister. Why was he not governing the country, rather than talking to a pipsqueak like me? I just didn’t get it.
• My impression is that [Keir] Starmer does not have this slavish fascination, and this desire to groom the press generally, whereas it was a core feature of Blair.
  • From an interview, as cited in Marie Le Conte "Rage against the dying of the right", The New European (25 September 2024)