Is there no keeping the man down? Two huge political news events are shaking the kingdom and Rupert Murdoch, deep into his eighties, is meddling in them both.
Many who saw his abject performance three years ago before the House of Commons home affairs select committee were convinced the mighty mogul was washed up. This was the infamous occasion on which his then wife, Wendi Deng, had to protect him from a man who thrust a custard pie in his face.
Murdoch looked old and tired. He fled to New York, his tail apparently between his legs, and awaited fresh disasters as many of his journalists were rounded up by the cops and charged with various offences related to systematic phone-hacking. There appeared nothing to which the Murdoch media empire would not stoop, and the man himself was diminished in the eyes of all.
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We should have known. He is back, consorting with both Nigel Farage, whose party stands on the brink of having its first elected MP when Tory defector Douglas Carswell fights the upcoming Clacton by-election for Ukip, and with Alex Salmond, whose drive for Scottish independence threatens (promises?) the break-up of the United Kingdom. There is – more than 60 years after Murdoch took the helm of the then infant family business, News Limited – no keeping the man down.
When Nigel Farage, the smiler with the (metaphorical) knife under his cloak, flew to New York to appear on a TV show, Murdoch sent for him. “Sir,” said an obsequious Murdoch aide, “the boss wants to see you. The big boss.”
Nothing flatters a politician – especially one on the make – more than a Murdoch summons. Remember all those years ago when a fresh-faced (and yet full of promise) Tony Blair dropped everything and scurried to the far side of the world to bend the knee to Murdoch?
Nearly two decades on, Rupert, still the man with an eye for the main chance, had sniffed the wind and wanted to know about what further defections there might be to Ukip from the Tories. The two men had a “good chat”, according to Farage, who explained: “This is an 83-year-old man whose finger is firmly on the pulse of what is happening in British and world politics. He was… interested in hearing about the Carswell story.”
Murdoch has always been attracted by power rather than by party politics: he concentrates on winners – be they Tony Blair (very much a winner once, remember) or the People’s Republic of China – regardless of what they stand for or what in their darker moments they might do.
Sun readers – many disillusioned white, working-class voters – are exactly those Farage wants to attract, both for their numbers and the fact that they dilute the right-wing middle classes who have thus far rallied to Ukip’s standard. If The Sun told its readers next May to vote as they feel, rather than slavishly follow a mainstream party, that would boost Ukip’s support markedly.
In Scotland, Murdoch wields great influence through his ownership of the Scottish Sun. While his London papers toe the consensus line, opposing the break-up of the United Kingdom, he could be on the brink of committing the Scottish Sun to support the Yes vote.
He is certainly more than happy to play footsie with Alex Salmond, the would-be leader of an independent Scotland. Murdoch’s tweets over the weekend demonstrated all his accumulated hostility to the British powers-that-be. He singled out the BBC (as ever): “Most powerful media, BBC, totally biased for No.” And he added: “Scottish independence means huge black eye for the whole political establishment, especially Cameron and Milliband [sic].”
If the Glasgow-based tabloid, Scotland’s biggest circulation daily selling nearly a quarter of a million copies daily mainly to the key west of Scotland onetime Labour voters, does come out for ‘Yes’ (as confidently predicted in today’s Independent) it could be that a man without a vote (Murdoch is an Australian-born, US citizen) may have a far, far greater impact on the outcome than those headed to the polls.
Should the Yes campaign win, Murdoch, whose grandfather was a Scottish Presbyterian minister who emigrated to Australia in 1884, would have changed utterly the land of his forefathers, and the Sun could claim – as it did famously in 1992 when John Major won a surprise general election victory – “It’s the Sun wot won it.”
There remain many ‘ifs’ in the remaining nine days of the Scottish referendum campaign [the vote is on 18 September] but if Murdoch’s paper supports Salmond and the dissolution of the UK and if the Yes camp triumphs, this might be the ageing Murdoch’s greatest monument: Wapping and the defeat of the print unions reduced to a mere tributary in the long, surging flow of his career.
Salmond, equally as canny as Murdoch, has been wooing the media tycoon, calling him “a remarkable man”. He “likes” Murdoch and sees nothing wrong in the relationship between politicians and media barons. The report of the Leveson inquiry found that Scotland’s First Minister displayed a “striking” willingness to lobby in Westminster for New Corp, Murdoch’s organisation. Cosy or what?
Ex-PM Gordon Brown has stepped forward as the front man for a clearly panicked No campaign, offering – very late in the day – the ‘Devo max’ solution once totally spurned by Westminster. Should it happen, Murdoch, the Great Meddler, and his battalions of readers versus Brown and his dour uncharismatic solidity is, on the face of it, scarcely a contest.
