The man who saw euro crisis coming: Mail’s ex-City editor dies at 80
HE WAS said to be the Queen Mother’s favourite columnist, probably because, as one commentator observed, ‘it will be a very bad day indeed if he doesn’t make you laugh or think’.
Andrew Alexander was a Eurosceptic, as one colleague said yesterday, ‘long before the phrase was coined’.
As for the euro itself, well, the current chaos in Greece backs up what the Mail’s former City Editor and latterday columnist had been saying for years – that a ‘one-sizefits-all’ monetary policy can never work. How Andrew, who died on Sunday aged 80, would have enjoyed joining the debate with his controversial and trenchant views.
He worked for the Mail for 42 years as parliamentary sketch writer, columnist and City Editor.
In the latter role, for 16 years, this elegant figure illuminated the Square Mile where his name was revered as a shrewd observer and brilliant analyst as he kept Mail readers well informed – and always ahead of the news.
He was one of the great economic commentators of our age. It was Andrew who broke the stunning story in 1991 that then industrialist Lord Hanson was quietly planning to mount an £8billion (£16billion in today’s money) bid for the flagship of British industry, the chemical giant ICI.
As for the European Community, Andrew’s withering assessment was: ‘With luck – and commonsense – we will one day wonder why we persisted in it. It brings no advantages, only costs.’
Indeed, he was a memorable phrase- maker. When Labour Chancellor Denis Healey famously compared being attacked by his rival Geoffrey Howe to ‘ being savaged by a dead sheep’, he was borrowing the epithet (unacknowledged) from Andrew Alexander.
The journalist’s great political friend was Enoch Powell, from whom he learned much and with whose right-wing views he generally agreed. They met when he was the Mail’s parliamentary sketchwriter and they became lifelong friends.
His first job was with the Yorkshire Post as a leader writer, and 18 months later he decided to try to become an MP. Aged 27, he stood as Conservative candidate for Colne Valley in a byelection in 1963 – but lost to Labour.
Political ambitions thwarted, he joined the Daily Telegraph as parliamentary sketch writer, and in 1972, switched his talents to the Mail.
In 1984, he took over from the legendary Mail City Editor Patrick Sergeant and amassed many awards, retiring in 2000.
Andrew continued to write a weekly column for the Mail until last year. He leaves a brother, Tim, and nieces Susannah Jane and Sarah Kate.