This column hereby promises maximum scrutiny of the private life of Rebekah Wade

The appointment of Rebekah Wade as the editor of the Sun has given rise to much baseless speculation. It has been suggested that she may swing the paper behind the euro. We are told she may ditch Page Three girls, to whom she is said to have a feminist aversion. She is, says my esteemed colleague Roy Campbell-Greenslade in the Guardian, a former young Tory who may be ‘ready to cut the umbilical cord with Downing Street’ and support Iain Duncan Smith or whoever may succeed him.

All these theories ignore a simple fact. It is Rupert Murdoch, not Rebekah Wade, who will determine the editorial policy and future political allegiances of the Sun. I don’t doubt that she will have a say at the margins, but she is not going to be allowed to do what Mr Murdoch does not want her to. If Mr Murdoch remains against the euro, so does the Sun. It’s as simple as that. Even if she wanted to get rid of Page Three girls – which I rather doubt – Mr Murdoch and the management of News International would not let her do so. The recent success of the Daily Star, which has appreciably increased its quotient of tit’n’bum, and seen its sales rise by some 17 per cent in the process, guarantees the longevity of Page Three girls.

In any case, I am sceptical of Roy Campbell-Greenslade’s characterisation of Rebekah as a sort of closet Tory who has recently fallen out with Cherie Blair and Alastair Campbell. (According to the Daily Mail’s Ephraim Hardcastle column, Mr Campbell and his partner, Fiona Millar, were guests recently at a party Rebekah and her husband, the actor Ross Kemp, threw at their Battersea house.) Twenty years ago Rebekah would probably have been a Thatcherite, as I believe Roy may have been.