Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson
Nelson speaking in 2012
Born	Fraser Nelson (1973-05-14) 14 May 1973 Nairn, Nairnshire, Scotland, United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Education	University of Glasgow City University
Occupation	Journalist (editor, The Spectator)

Fraser Nelson (born 14 May 1973) is a right-wing British political journalist and editor of The Spectator magazine.

Early life

Educated at Nairn Academy and Dollar Academy, Nelson went on to study History and politics at the University of Glasgow and gained a Diploma in journalism at City University, London. He is Catholic, and he once worked as a barman at Cleos in Rosyth.

Journalism career

Nelson began his journalistic career as a business reporter with The Times in 1997, followed by a short spell as Scottish political correspondent. At a party in Scotland he met Andrew Neil, then editor of The Scotsman who recruited him as its political editor in 2001. In 2003 he moved to The Business, a sister title of The Scotsman in the Barclay brothers' Press Holdings group. In July 2004 the brothers bought The Telegraph Group, which included The Spectator and in December 2005 they sold The Scotsman Publications Ltd. Neil had been appointed Chief Executive of The Spectator after the Barclays bought it, and in 2006 he brought in Nelson as associate editor and then political editor of the magazine. He replaced Matthew d'Ancona as editor of The Spectator when the latter was sacked in August 2009.

In addition to his role as editor of The Spectator, Nelson was also a political columnist for the News of the World from 2006 and a board director with the Centre for Policy Studies think tank. He was named Political Columnist of the Year in the 2009 Comment Awards.

In 2013, the Evening Standard named Nelson as one of the most influential journalists working in London. The British Society of Magazine Editors awarded Nelson the 2013 Editors’ Editor of the Year. In the same year he won the British Press Award as Political journalist of the Year.

Style and beliefs

Nelson is an economic libertarian and a supporter of the Conservative Party. Nelson has stated that he is a supporter of immigration. He describes The Spectator magazine under his editorship as "right of centre, but not strongly right of centre". He has on occasion criticised David Cameron's leadership but is generally supportive, and has also been known to praise Cameron's Liberal Democrat coalition partner from 2010 to 2015, Nick Clegg.

On immigration

On 4 April 2014, Nelson published a piece in the Daily Telegraph entitled "The British Muslim is truly one among us – and proud to be so", which praised the integration of mainstream Islam in the UK and described it as one "of our great success stories". He returned to the theme in May 2015, with an article entitled "The unsayable truth about immigration: it's been a stunning success for Britain", in which he examined the history of Operation Trojan Horse, Sharia patrols, the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal and other scandals.

• "The irony is that Britain does not need legislation to make it more liberal. It can already claim to be one of the most tolerant places on earth. The 2011 census showed how we have absorbed the unprecedented rates of immigration over the past decade without anything like the far-Right backlash seen on the Continent."

On gay marriage

• "If the Unitarian Church and certain strands of Judaism want to marry gay couples on their premises, then why should government stand in their way? For the record, I quite agree. Religious freedom in Britain ought to be universal, extended to the handful of churches or synagogues who want same-sex marriage."

On the nuclear family

• David Cameron is the "Prime Minister of a country where 48 per cent of children will see their parents split up. Strip out immigrants (who flatter most social statistics) and only a minority of British babies are born to married parents. By the age of 16, a British child is considerably more likely to have a television in the bedroom than a father in the house."

On Charlie Hebdo

Nelson wrote two days after the Charlie Hebdo massacre a reflective piece in which he compared that massacre to the Deal barracks bombing by the Provisional IRA:

What does a massacre in Paris have to do with [Muslims]? To denounce this would accept the premise that, as a Muslim, you are somehow caught up in all of this. The difference, of course, is that the IRA murdered in the name of Irish republicanism, not Catholicism. Few people in Britain thought that the former was an extension of the latter. Any priest who voiced support for terrorism, anywhere, would be excommunicated – so no one could credibly claim any overlap. Islam is not so lucky. It has no effective means of banning hate preachers, and now has a new breed of fanatics happy to murder in its name... Overall, British Muslims have been poorly served by their leadership.

Nelson also noted that the Muslim Council of Britain released an unequivocal statement condemning the Paris massacre, while the Islamic Human Rights Commission had released nothing to that date.

Further reading

• Interview in the Sunday Herald, June 2009
• Interview in the Independent on Sunday, March 2010

External links

• Articles at The Spectator
• Articles at The Scotsman
• Articles at The Business
• journalisted.com: "Fraser Nelson"

Media offices
Preceded by Matthew d'Ancona	Editor of The Spectator 2009-	Incumbent