BILLIONAIRES strengthened their grip on Britain’s corporate media today when the company owned by Jonathan Harold Esmond Vere Harmsworth, the Viscount Rothermere, bought the i newspaper.

The i’s former owners, JPI Media, sold the daily newspaper today morning for a reported £49.6 million to DMGT, a media conglomerate Lord Rothermere inherited in 1998 from his Oswald Mosley-supporting father.

Lord Rothermere told journalists his company, which publishes the virulently right-wing rag the Daily Mail, was “committed to preserving its distinctive, high-quality and politically independent editorial style.”