What exactly is the hold that Murdoch has on this man?
During an opening blah-blah lasting some 25 minutes, Prime Minister David Cameron served up the expected politician’s gruel of tough action, getting to bottoms, wider visions, press futures and real clarity about “how all this came to pass”. I suspect that Dave perhaps is, quite genuinely, wondering how he allowed himself to get into this totally avoidable pickle. Or perhaps he knows exactly why – of which debate, more below.
After this, however, the Tory leader was subjected to easily the most aggressive press questioning of a UK Prime Minister I’ve ever seen. The Sun’s man especially – who is presumably wondering if his paper might be the next one to be sacrificed as an offering to the Sacred Cow – wanted to know just how hard Dave had really tried to rigorously check Coulson out. Dave blathered, and an even more harsh question was aimed at him. He had to blather, because as The Slog’s media contacts are very happy to confirm – direct from the mouth of George Osborne – Cameron did no checking at all. He didn’t have to check out a man who worked closely with the Murdoch family: for him, it was a gift-horse in the mouth of which he would not look.
Despite today’s press aggro – during which the ITV bloke accused him of having “screwed up” – Cameron three times avoided the question everyone wants an answer to: will the BSkyB deal go ahead? He talked unconvincingly about using the proper channels to make a decision about a criminally compromised organisation that has used every improper method and channel at its disposal in order to subvert the workings of the media, the law, the police and even Parliament in Britain. As a line, it is risible, and impossible to hold. Apart from anything else, OfCom could scupper the deal today on the basis of ‘not fit and proper’; but even if it didn’t, Cameron’s insistence on all things ‘proper’ is doing little more than make him look a proper Charlie.
The Beeb too finds itself in a tricky position: the studio discussions after the press conference studiously avoided the BSkyB issue. And Nick Robinson – having asked the question of Cameron and heard it ignored – clearly felt unable to press him on it.
But for my money, Cameron gave a damaging performance overall for two reasons. First, he looked shifty when asked about Rebekah Brooks’ continued existence in her role as the UK’s Newscorp CEO. When eventually pinned down, he went around the back door by saying, “If I was Rupert Murdoch, I’d have accepted her resignation when it was offered”. Secondly – and this is I think absolutely central to where this story goes next – his unwilligness to at least confirm further references of the Newscorp/BSkyB takeover has given the game away: Cameron doesn’t want the deal to fail, because he knows if it does, Murdoch’s empire will at best shrink dramatically….and probably collapse.
Think about it: you’re the Prime Minister, and it is your sorry task regularly to have to crawl up the bottom of an unpleasant old Aussie with a controlling nature, fond of making insistent demands in return for his support. The fates then hand you a golden opportunity to get him out of your hair forever – but you don’t take it.
Why would you not take such an opportunity?
Murdoch is fighting for his life now; he wasn’t last year or last month, but he is now. He simply cannot afford to have David Cameron dump him. So he has an insurance policy. And that, in my estimation, is what frightens Cameron.
There can be no doubt at all that Murdoch has seen all this coming – hence his decision to ship son James off to the US and buy daughter Elizabeth’s company Shine. And hence the decision by somebody at Newscorp to register ‘The Sun on Sunday’ (plus all variations thereof) last week. And knowing politicians as he does for the weak-fleshed, flawed and reckless bombasts they are, Rupe knows that he has to have a dossier on everyone with whom he does business. That’s why the idea that the Newscorp patriarch didn’t know all about this hacking and blagging from Day One is unlikely bordering on impossible. Rupert Murdoch is nothing more or less than one of the leading global threats to personal privacy. One day soon – we must hope – more people will at last see the huge iceberg – of which the Newscorp scandal is only the tip.
I also have a further theory. While Murdoch did at one point have a strong reason to defend Brooks (as the CEO fronting with James Murdoch the BSkyB management takeover) he really doesn’t any more. Daughter Elizabeth could now quite capably fulfil that role. Maybe the old boy is simply a bit gaga and taken in by Becka, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it: my hunch is that Rebekah Brooks herself has insurance….in just the same way that Andy Coulson obviously does.
Surely Cameron can see this. Surely most of the major players must know that Gottadammerung is about to replace Gottadamngoodreadership.
Stay tuned.
The Slog 
