If memory serves, Gore Vidal liked to stress the point that he was always the bugger, never the buggered. Something similar might be said of Rupert Murdoch’s approach to his business dealings. The Dirty Digger – and bugger, for that matter – is not accustomed to failure. And yet, inside just seven days, he has lost the News of the World and his bid to purchase the 61% of BSkyB he does not already own. Cue astonishing scenes and muppetry from the likes of George Monbiot who tweeted, I kid you not, “This is our Berlin Wall moment”.
And yet something has changed on this remarkable day. Credit is due to Ed Miliband and some of his backbenchers (notably Tom Watson) for they’ve led the way on this matter. The Prime Minister has been oddly lethargic, as though caught out and perhaps even a little shamed by his own past willingness to do what was necessary to placate Murdoch’s wolves. (The ghost of Dominic Grieve, shunted aside ‘cos the Sun demanded it, should haunt Cameron). Of course, Cameron is hardly the only pol to curry favour with Murdoch and Miliband was quite happy to attend the News Interational summer party just two weeks ago.
Nevertheless – and judging by the television pictures – there seemed a palpable sense of relief at Westminster today. There are venal and crooked politicians and many of those that aren’t ain’t too impressive either but for the most part, in my experience, their intentions tend towards the decent even if they’re often eventually corrupted by the rules of the games they play. Part of that, for sure, is dealing with the press and there can’t be an MP in any even semi-senior position who hasn’t winced at the squalid compromises needed to purchase protection from the tabloid shitstorm.
These compromises are bound to be humiliating, if only because it is all but impossible to argue in good faith with an adversary utterly uninterested in observing the same good faith niceties. And so the game goes. There remains much to be said for the British press but, as Operation Motorman demonstrated, almost every paper has been happy to pay for stolen information. For that matter, many MPs still remember the zeal with which the Telegraph pursued the expenses scandal and many of them feel, rightly or not, they were treated with undue contempt and with little to no regard for due process or any distinction between the truly guilty and the relatively blameless.
Perhaps this exagerrates matters somewhat. Nonetheless, there is a sense – for today at least – of those who have been bullied fighting back against the bullies. That’s not an argument for ending scrutiny, rather a call for better, more courageous politicians prepared to stand up to vested interests even, perhaps especially, when those interests are in the press gallery. As Baldwin said all those years ago, the press demand “power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot through the ages”. There’s always been some truth to that and perhaps in recent times Prime Ministers have been too afraid too often and failed to do enough to challenge the powerful themselves.
I thought Cameron, so strangely detached in recent days, began to rediscover his voice at PMQs today (and also, later, when announcing the public inquiry). He must, surely, have known Andy Coulson was dragging him down and now that an inquiry is up and running the Prime Minister had the look of a man relieved finally to have cut himself free from this burden and ready to set a new course of his own choosing. Perhaps that’s too optimistic a view but I hope not.
In the end, Murdoch’s power is the power of the mob. Once the mob turns, however, you should place your bets differently. Parliament may have realised this today.
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