PAUL DACRE, who thinks of himself as a conductor, emerges from his office at 6pm each weekday to tune up his orchestra: the writers and editors of Britain’s second-bestselling newspaper, the Daily Mail. He paces around the newsroom, ripping up pages, rewriting headlines and dressing down hacks. It is, Mr Dacre has said, an exercise in “remorseless energy”. The next morning that energy tumbles onto the doormats of suburban England. Judges quibbling over Brexit? “Enemies of the people”! Food wholesalers hiring staff from Hungary? “Is there no one left in Britain who can make a sandwich?”

Since Mr Dacre got the job in 1992, the Sun and Daily Telegraph have each appointed six editors. Five prime ministers have occupied Downing Street. Mr Dacre has gone unchallenged. Even when he was on holiday, says an ex-lieutenant, “the paper would come out in his image”. Yet the orchestra will soon have a new conductor. On June 6th Mr Dacre announced that he would move to a backroom role. Geordie Greig, who edits the Mail on Sunday, will take over in November.

How much power will he have? Measuring newspapers’ influence is tricky. One study found that by backing Labour in 1997, the Sun might have accounted for 8-20% of Tony Blair’s winning margin. But most research suggests the media have limited sway over public opinion. Despite its relentless criticism of Jeremy Corbyn, 17% of the Mail’s readers voted for his party at the last election. There were more Labour-voting Mail readers (about 250,000) than the entire circulation of the left-wing Guardian. Fleet Street’s loudest voices could not prevent Theresa May losing her majority.

The Mail’s power derives instead from politicians’ belief that it is powerful. They credit Mr Dacre with insight into the whims of suburban “middle England”. Politicians treat newspapers as proxies for public opinion, says Rasmus Nielsen of Oxford University, since polls struggle to gauge the strength of feeling on any topic. They also recognise that other outlets often follow up the Mail’s stories, granting it influence beyond its own readership.

Mostly, politicians fear that the Mail could give them a bloody nose. The late Tessa Jowell, once a minister, said that the paper gave her a “clinical beating” on plans to let pubs open through the night. Mr Blair thought falling out with its editor meant “a huge and sustained attack”. “When you’re coming up with policy, you’ll be thinking: ‘What will the Mail think of this?’” says a government press officer.

Its influence does not appear to be tied to its circulation, which rose early in Mr Dacre’s tenure but has fallen by 41% since 2002. This is partly because the Mail has kept more readers than other papers (the Telegraph has shed 50% and the Sun 59% of their readers over the same period) and because neither the web nor TV has supplanted its agenda-setting role. Mr Dacre does not have a computer in his office and shuns Twitter: instincts dictate his coverage.

Politicians hope Mr Greig might go easier on them. Mr Dacre spends 14 hours a day at work, scribbling tirades against the “liberal elite”. His successor once edited Tatler, a society magazine, and used to discuss poetry over breakfast with Lucian Freud. Rivals expect him to lighten the paper’s tone to appeal to younger readers. A study by researchers at Oxford University found that under-35s were far less likely than older people to trust the Mail.

Some are excited that Mr Greig is a Remainer. He is unlikely to change the paper’s stance on Brexit, which Mr Dacre insists would be “commercial suicide”. Yet he could provide less resistance to a watered-down exit deal than his predecessor might have. “It will probably be more nuanced,” says Nicholas Coleridge, who was once his boss at Tatler. The orchestra will play on, but perhaps a little more quietly.