Murdoch steps down from the fight
The Skimmer 4:58pm
In the end Rupert Murdoch decided he didn't want a fight with the Tories after all, so he pulled the plug on Kelvin MacKenzie's bid to give David Davis a run for his money in the upcoming by-election.
The whole plan had been conceived as a terrific wheeze at the 40th birthday party of Sun editor Rebekah Wade. Murdoch was in cavalier form and said to MacKenzie, his favourite former Sun editor, that he would bankroll a MacKenzie bid to ensure that Davis was given a real fight.
MacKenzie was much taken with the idea and beetled round to BBC1's This Week, where he told Andrew Neil the news on air. But, in the cold light of dawn, Murdoch was having second thoughts.
Murdoch has no great love for David Cameron or the Cameroon Tories. But he's concluded that they are going to form the next government, and Murdoch always likes to be on the side of the winners. So why pick an unnecessary fight with them? Why fall out with the likely winners of the next general election?
McKenzie was quietly but firmly told to ditch his electoral ambitions -- much to the relief of James Murdoch, the son who is supposed to be running the British arm of the Murdoch empire and rather likes the Cameron Tories.
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Comments
DW
June 16th, 2008 6:47pmQuelle surprise - this is going to be a damp squib of a contest ....that is if DD has even managed to resign yet. How he's going to keep this by-election in the public eye is beyond me, if there's no serious competition.
Of course DD's civil liberties campaign matters deeply to many, including me, but to choose a by-election as the way to highlight it, is daft.
Silent Hunter
June 16th, 2008 7:21pmMurdoch is such a Tosser! LOL
hookie
June 16th, 2008 7:42pmNow there was I thinking Kelvin McKenzie was a populist man of principle and he has gone all yellow bellied coward without Rupert Bear's dosh in his back pocket.
I did have a feeling when he appeared on This Week that he didn't look as though he was quite sure about the enterprise and given that he had come hot foot from a 40th birthday party he can always claim that it was a decision influenced more by the amber nectar than anything else. However, I am hugely disappointed because it would have at least turned a rather daft and likely to be utterly boring event into a funtime carnival.
Come on Kel Give'em Hell. Get another backer!
I suspected that his son James would give his father an earful given that he is one of Con-man Dave's best mates and almost a Tory Toff himself.
Great to have that sort of power isn't it? A rich billionaire wants someone to stand and offers to bankroll them; billionaire's son and heir rings daddy and daddy does what son and heir asks for because daddy is making him look a laughing stock among his toff mates.
What a wonderful democracy we live in. it is called Advanced Capitalism made crazy by too many E numbers in our kids food as well as too many E tablets.
Binge drinkers are now in prime positions in our institutions and large companies as well as in the media and a man of morals who objects to the alcohol culture himself is seen as a bad leader. Perhaps the people would like it better if he got legless every night and necked a few Es.
J. K. Rowling couldn't have made it up.
Diablo
June 16th, 2008 11:44pmHookie - you are J K Rowling and I claim my £5!
Pete
June 16th, 2008 11:50pmMurdoch has recognised that Davis is a winner!
In the process he has recognised that Labour are losers and has dumped them.