The political commentator talks about the response to his attack on the Daily Telegraph, his hopes for the future of the paper – and why the distinction between deer hunting and deer stalking matters

For a step taken out of such forceful conviction, Peter Oborne’s decision to drop a bomb on the Daily Telegraph did not come easily.

“I had huge reservations,” says the paper’s former chief political commentator of his decision to write an excoriating piece about the Telegraph’s leadership for the website OpenDemocracy, shortly after his very public resignation from the newspaper. “When I first thought about doing it, I decided not to, because I’m conscious that there are countless wonderful journalists there, reporters and writers who do a brilliant job. And I am extremely troubled by the idea of bringing bad publicity to the Telegraph. I love the Telegraph. But I feel I love it more than the owners. And when I watched last week’s HSBC coverage, I changed my mind.”

Even so, he says, it was hard to send the request for comment to the newspaper’s PR department that would make his decision irreversible. “Pressing the button was a big moment,” he says. “I was worried about giving ammunition to rivals. I failed to press it two or three times. But I did. And after a while, I felt relief. Because then the die was cast.”

So it was that Oborne detailed what he perceives to be the Telegraph’s failure to maintain its historic standards. The editor had been replaced by a “head of content”. A front-page story had confused deer hunting and deer stalking. And, rather more profoundly, Oborne said, the Barclay brothers had presided over a “collapse” in the separation of advertising and editorial. He reserved particular fury for the failure to adequately cover the recent HSBC scandal, or a number of other controversial stories involving the bank, which is a major Telegraph advertiser. And he said the chief executive, Murdoch MacLennan, had conceded that advertising affected editorial but protested that “it was not as bad as all that”.

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The Telegraph denied everything, sort of, not addressing the detail but describing Oborne’s piece as an “astonishing and unfounded attack, full of inaccuracy and innuendo”. The story was well covered in the Times and the Independent; the Guardian put it on the front page. (One broadsheet covered it rather less thoroughly.) Oborne was interviewed on Channel 4 News, and for a few hours Twitter’s journalistic community could talk of little else. “It’s been … exhausting,” Oborne says, sounding a little dazed. “I’m all right. I’m a bit knackered. I expected it to be well covered, but I didn’t expect it to be on the front page. But I haven’t seen any schadenfreude. There’s been no glee.”

Oborne has always been a journalist of principle and independence; a Tory to his fingertips, he nonetheless frequently breaks the party line. Indeed, he is sometimes seen as relishing the opportunities for such martyrdom a little too much; one former colleague describes him as a “very clever, very angry teddy bear”. It was suggested this week that he would face questions over the timing of his decision to go public: he had initially intended to go quietly, working out his notice before moving on to pastures new, and only decided to go public after his column was discontinued.

Still, it is hard to listen to his invective over the Telegraph’s decline and conclude that this is anything but a principled step. Above all, Oborne insists, he was acting for his newspaper’s readers, and for those journalists who were not in a position to act. “I don’t want anyone to follow me,” he says. “People have mortgages to pay, families to bring up. But I feel about Telegraph readers the way that Guardian journalists feel about Guardian readers. They may be different categories, but they’re wonderful in both cases. It’s an honour to write for them. And Britain would be a much lesser place if they weren’t served. The Telegraph has been famous all my lifetime for its straight news reporting. But somehow or another, thanks to management, that reputation is being lost. The staff are brilliant journalists, and a lot of them are close friends.”

Has he felt vindicated, then, by the response from his erstwhile colleagues? “I’ve been incredibly moved by the response. It’s been really lovely. I’ve had so many messages I can’t even begin to reply.” He admits he has heard from only “one or two” at the Telegraph. “But,” he goes on, “I feel confident that the majority of them agree with me.”

Whether they agree with his decision to take his concerns public is another question. Some of those silent Telegraph reporters of whom he thinks so highly may be more sceptical than he is about the rationale behind the rest of the press’s enthusiasm for the subject. But there is little doubt that the issues Oborne raises are profound. More and more media outlets, finding commercial pressures greater than ever, are eroding the distinctions between advertising and editorial, without always letting readers know that such a process is under way.

“I do think we’ve seen the rise of this invisible executive creating the truth which the rest of the country lives by,” Oborne says. Even so, a close-up view convinced him that the Telegraph was a special case. “It went over an edge a year or two ago. What I have seen is unprecedented in a quality newspaper. Unprecedented.” Further evidence for that view emerged on Wednesday when Guido Fawkes unearthed a memo from Sony to the Telegraph praising its “unique” partnership on the film Fury, which “offer[ed] a really integrated solution that genuinely works in editorial and paid-for activity”.

Oborne lays the blame for such unique partnerships squarely at the door of the Barclay brothers and MacLennan. “Mr Murdoch MacLennan must quit,” he says. “I don’t want to sound bitter or anything, but in my personal opinion there is no way the Telegraph can be saved under his leadership. And there are huge questions about the Barclays. They need to show that they love the paper, that they understand it, and they need to explain how standards have slipped so sharply.”

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This brings us to the vital question: What now? If Oborne’s resignation is to be more than an empty gesture, there has to be some mechanism for change at the Telegraph – or at least for the paper’s approach to produce problematic commercial consequences. So how does Oborne propose this should happen? “Well, I would just say this to the Barclays: do you really want to be remembered as the family which destroyed the Daily Telegraph? A great part of Britain’s civil fabric – is that how you want to be remembered? Either they must reverse their current policies and start to cherish and love the paper, or sell it. Please sell it.”

Whether an appeal to the owners’ better nature will work is debatable. But Oborne has another hope. “In the end, it takes us to the readers,” he says. “It’s a bit like a football club which has been taken over by some strange international consortium: the club actually belongs to the fans … I hope that the readers will write in and express their despair.”

And there, perhaps, is the problem: there is nothing illegal about allowing commercial imperatives to influence editorial decisions, and you can’t force a company to hold an inquiry into something it wishes to continue to do. Nor can you force the readers to notice. (They won’t read about it in the Telegraph, after all.) Oborne, in truth, seems to know this in his heart of hearts. “I hope this will be a temporary convulsion,” he says. “But if the trajectory continues, even for two or three more years, the way it has done, there will be nothing left to salvage.”

Whatever happens, he will have nothing more to do with it, and for a little while at least he will fall silent. “I’m going to the Lahore literary festival,” he says, the weariness in his voice falling away. And after that? “I haven’t the faintest idea. I haven’t thought beyond. It’s a wonderful feeling.”

It is hard to imagine Oborne without a column, or a plan. But he insists on his imminent aimlessness with the same confidence that colours every sentence. Only once does he falter. What is the difference between deer hunting and deer stalking, anyway? “Deer hunting is what happens” – he laughs – “it was banned. It’s carried out, I think I’m right in saying, with a lot of dogs, and deer stalking is a sniper, with a ghillie. Let’s call it up …” There’s a bit of Googling over the phone, and then a more detailed explanation comes forth. “I know this might all sound extraordinary to Guardian readers,” he concludes. “But it matters that there’s a difference. It matters to Telegraph readers. They need a voice of civilised conservatism. And if we lose that, we lose something incredibly precious.”