Writing yesterday my esteemed colleague James Forsyth said that for want of a better alternative Jeremy Hunt was the Tory Party’s coming man. I hate disagree
with James, but I would put more money on Colonel Gaddafi making it through the next 12 months than the Conservatives’ “rising star”.
Every newspaper group with the exception of News International, along with the BBC, formally opposed Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of Sky. The editors of every newspaper, television channel and radio station, with the exception of editors at News International, will be telling their hacks to go for Hunt. My colleagues will have a solid public interest justification for acting in their employers’ interest because we will be punishing corruption so blatant a seven-year-old could see through it. Rupert Murdoch offered Hunt propaganda on behalf of the Tory Party, Mr Hunt gave him a business favour in return. Berlusconi’s Italy manages itself with more honour than this.
If you want a taste of the fury which is about to descend on the minister consider this piece by the normally mild Jeremy Warner of the Telegraph:
‘So Rupert Murdoch has got his way – again. Not for the first time, the politicians have bent over backwards to accommodate News Corporation’s commercial ambitions. Not for the first time, all other voices have been roundly excluded from any say in the grubby little bargain that Britain’s most powerful media tycoon has managed to strike with a government apparently so desperate for the great man’s blessing that it’s willing to bend the rules to smooth his path… Outrageously, ministers have bypassed accepted practice to speed through a merger that brings together the owner of half the national press with the country’s dominant pay-TV provider, and far and away its richest broadcaster. Had they given Tesco the go-ahead to bid for Sainsbury’s, they could scarcely have sanctioned a more monstrous alliance – or been more cavalier with the public interest duties of high office.’
That I have to warn Mr Hunt is the mildest description of the sweetheart deal he has cut in this morning’s (non-Murdoch) papers.
By the time my colleagues have finished with him, there will be nothing left but bones.
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