Monday, June 04, 2012 

Ah, consistency.

Jeremy Hunt: acts as effective minister for the Murdoch BSkyB bid, having originally shown "acute bias" in favour of it, and then swaps emails/texts with both James Murdoch and News Corp lobbyist Fred Michel once in his "quasi-judicial" role. Was also apparently unaware that his special adviser Adam Smith exchanged over 500 texts/emails with Michel, including information about the process before it was announced to parliament. Cameron refuses to refer his case to Alex Allen, the official who oversees the ministerial code, for the reason that Hunt is an effective firewall for both him and George Osborne.

Sayeeda Warsi: Fails to declare some slight income to the Lords register, and allegedly claimed £2,000 in rent for a room she was staying in gratis. Also "forgets" to declare her shared business interest with a friend who travelled with her on an official visit to Pakistan, although it appears he didn't gain financially in any way. The claims are hardly on the scale of those against Adam Werritty and Liam Fox, when Cameron called in the cabinet secretary and not Allan to investigate. Warsi just so happens to be unpopular with the Tory grassroots, making her expendable, so this time Allan has been called in to adjudicate. If only Warsi wasn't about as likeable as a vomiting cavalier, there might have been some Tories willing to defend her and attack Cameron's Blair-like hypocrisy.

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6/04/2012 06:42:00 pm | |

Thursday, May 31, 2012 

The hunt will go on.

When the news came through last night that Andy Coulson had been charged with perjury, you can't help but suspect that Jeremy Hunt sighed with relief. The already slight chance that he would today be sacked or referred to the cabinet secretary/Sir Alex Allen following his evidence to the Leveson inquiry was almost entirely extinguished. After all, for two of David Cameron's acquaintances to be charged with a serious criminal offence is unfortunate; three begins to look like carelessness. Amusing as it is that Rebekah Brooks and her husband are facing the beak over perverting the course of justice, it's ever so slightly more damaging that Coulson was allegedly telling lies to a Scottish court while still Cameron's director of communications. Hunt therefore simply has to stay: not only is he continuing to provide cover for Cameron himself, whose judgement looks more and more suspect by the hour, he's also now doing much the same for George Osborne.

One of the key new pieces of information disclosed today was that within minutes of Robert Peston disclosing that Vince Cable had said he had declared war on Rupert Murdoch, Hunt was on the phone to James Murdoch in a call arranged earlier in the day, Hunt having already texted Murdoch junior to congratulate him on the European Commission saying the BSkyB bid could go ahead. Whether or not Murdoch had an inkling about what was coming or not isn't clear, although it's long been rumoured that the source of Peston's story was Will Lewis, formerly the Torygraph's editor-in-chief and shortly to join News Corp's Management and Standards Committee. No doubt having been subjected to a typically Murdochian haranguing from James, Hunt straight after emailed both Andy Coulson and George Osborne, saying he was "seriously worried we are going to screw this up". 48 minutes later, Osborne texted Hunt saying "I hope you like the solution!"

Hunt almost certainly did: he had after all written a memo complaining bitterly about how Cable had referred the BSkyB bid to Ofcom, and how James was, unusually for him, "pretty furious about it". Hunt's entire memo was just about as partisan as it gets, and expressed effective contempt for those opposed to the takeover. The original draft also gives the game away in two key ways: first in how he worries that it will put them in the wrong place politically, which he today claimed was a reference to the usual Conservative values of belief in free markets rather than how they were in danger of royally pissing off their friends at News International, and secondly in how it makes clear that News Corp viewed the takeover as effectively the move to Wapping all over again, giving them full spectrum dominance of the UK media. Why else would the takeover bid have been named Project Rubicon, otherwise?

Despite all this evidence of his own acute bias, including a phone call he made to Murdoch after being specifically advised that he should not make such contact with him, Hunt was duly passed the task of exercising "quasi-judicial" oversight on the takeover, a concept which prior to 2010 Hunt freely admits he had not encountered. Now the battle of contradictions begins: Hunt on the record stated that he could not have wished for a more diligent special adviser than Adam Smith, repeatedly praising him for his hard work, and said that he didn't believe there was a minister who had worked more closely with their SpAd. Smith knew what Hunt knew, and knew what he had to be careful about, and yet at the same time Fred Michel, News Corp's lobbyist, was bombarding Smith with emails and texts and getting plenty back in return. Hunt claims to have been shocked when the full extent of their contact was exposed and claimed he knew nothing of it, despite having been in personal contact with both Michel and James Murdoch during the same period, both of whom were saying much the same things to him as Michel had to Smith. Either he worked incredibly closely with Smith as he said, or he didn't. We didn't get a proper answer as to which it was.

Come the day after James Murdoch's evidence to Leveson, and it was clear someone was for the chop. It wasn't going to be Hunt though, oh no. Sure, he considered resigning himself, but "it wouldn't have been appropriate". Instead his incredibly close adviser had to sacrifice himself, despite the fact that Hunt accepts he has ultimate responsibility for his SpAd's actions and under the ministerial code that means that he should also go. David Cameron has for his part decided to completely ignore this aspect of the code, just as he decided it was Gus O'Donnell who should investigate Liam Fox over Adam Werritty, the result being an completely inadequate report, rather than commissioning a independent and in-depth investigation by the actual person employed to oversee the code.

Inept then doesn't even really begin to describe the coalition as it stands at the moment. At its best (bear with me) it's just cynical, whether it's Hunt claiming that he didn't know phone hacking was "a volcano waiting to erupt", or the Treasury today leaking midway through Hunt's evidence that the proposed cap on tax-deductible charity donations would be dropped, something that seems to have succeeded as the BBC are running it as their top story tonight. At worst, it's so stuck in the mire that all it can do is just hope that the focus shifts elsewhere, as a further eruption in the Eurozone might provide. In any other government Hunt would and should be finished. It's due to David Cameron's utter weakness just two years into office that Hunt is still culture secretary tonight.

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5/31/2012 07:30:00 pm | |

Friday, May 11, 2012 

A liar or an idiot.

Apart from the new email showing further proof of the closeness between Jeremy Hunt and Fred Michel, the most crucial piece of evidence given by Rebekah Brooks today at the Leveson inquiry was that she didn't believe her publishing of the details of sex offenders in the News of the World in the aftermath of the kidnap and murder of Sarah Payne would lead to reprisals. There are only two conclusions you can draw from such apparent insouciance: either Brooks is a liar, or she's an idiot. Her entire campaign was designed to force politicians to do something, and she and her staff knew that the precise way to do that was to get into the public domain information that would almost certainly lead, if not to vigilante action, than at the very least abuse and protests against those named. She perhaps didn't anticipate a paediatrician being targeted by mistake, but she absolutely knew what she was doing.

It's through this prism that you have to view the rest of her evidence, which was mostly mind-numbing in the extreme. Despite the fact she has been close to the last three prime ministers, we're meant to believe that this was all down to sheer friendliness on her part. Yes, obviously they thought they could get something by almost drawing her into their inner circle, but never once did she compromise her position as a journalist and never once did they compromise their position as a politician through their relationship.

Thankfully, Robert Jay was on far better form today than he was against the stonewalling Andy Coulson yesterday. He also seemed far better briefed. Brooks had to deny, unconvincingly, that she had variously demanded that Downing Street order a reopening of the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, else Theresa May would be appearing on the front page of the Sun every day until they did; that she did not, as widely reported, tell Andy Coulson that the Sun would not support the Conservatives until Dominic Grieve was moved from his job as shadow home secretary, having had the temerity to say to Brooks's face the Sun's coverage of crime and the Human Rights Act was hysterical; and that she did not in a phone call to Ed Balls demand the sacking of Sharon Shoesmith following the Baby Peter case, else they would "turn this thing on him".

Funny, isn't it, that there all these stories, all apparently untrue, about Brooks using her power and influence to demand things of politicians and yet she didn't believe there was anything inappropriate about the level of contact between the then editor of the biggest selling newspaper in the country and those making the law. She also didn't believe that politicians were trying to get to Rupert through contact with her, which is just about as obtuse as her evidence got. It was fascinating to learn though that David Cameron spoke to her repeatedly about the phone hacking accusations against the Screws, and yet he apparently never spoke to Andy Coulson about it. Very strange.

In spite then of how apparently little they discussed the BSkyB bid, which Brooks knew of two months before it was announced (it just so happens that it was almost in line with the Tories coming to power), it was mostly just Tories who commiserated with her when she was forced into resigning. It was done indirectly, naturally, and some of the reported words are not exact, but it is true that Cameron more or less said that he was sorry he couldn't show her the same loyalty she had shown him, as Ed Miliband had him on the run. He needn't have been concerned. Brooks today was loyalty personified. One suspects however that it won't save her from a short stretch in either Styal or Holloway.

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5/11/2012 04:19:00 pm | |

Thursday, May 10, 2012 

The eternal darkness of Coulson's spotless mind.

If, like me, you've seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and thought that the possibility of having certain memories wiped from your brain isn't necessarily a bad thing, then it seems that at long last a treatment has been developed that can achieve exactly that. It's called the Leveson inquiry.

Difficult as it is to believe, considering we've now had evidence from both James and Rupert Murdoch, neither of whom could remember almost anything controversial that has happened to them, the latest sufferer of amnesia to testify seems to have the most serious case. Andy Coulson could barely remember his name, let alone almost anything else that's happened to him over the past decade.

Here's an incomplete list of the things he couldn't recall: the conversations he had with Rupert Murdoch about the news content while editor of the News of the World; any conversation with KRM about the paper's endorsement at the 2005 election; any mention of his previous employment when George Osborne enquired whether he'd be interested in becoming the Tories' chief spin doctor; any shadow cabinet minister other than David Cameron asking about phone hacking; whether News Corp's lobbyist, Fred Michel, attended a lunch with Cameron and the then Spanish prime minister; whether Cameron sought further assurances from him after the Guardian's phone hacking revelations in 2009; any specific conversation about the News of the World's endorsement of the Tories in 2010; when he knew that the Sun was going to endorse the Tories in 2009; or having any conversation with Fred Michel, Rebekah Brooks, Jeremy Hunt or any other politician about the BSkyB takeover bid.

It was all unflinchingly loyal, and it was also absolutely infuriating. At times Coulson bordered on being incredulous at Robert Jay's questioning; did he really have to spell out why the Tories wanted him to deal with the media? His body language said exactly what he refused to, that it was breathtakingly obvious. As Michael Wolff writes, Coulson was the key conduit between News International and the Conservatives, and he alongside Rebekah Brooks was chiefly responsible for convincing Murdochs junior and senior that Cameron was a surer bet than Labour. It didn't matter that he didn't have a background in politics, as that was secondary. This is exactly why Cameron couldn't have cared less whether Coulson knew about hacking at the Screws, and why he apparently didn't enquire further regardless of all the warnings he was given. As long as he delivered in terms of the reason he was hired, and wasn't catastrophic at dealing with the rest of the media, he'd be just fine.

It was only once in office that the problems really started, as the whole phone hacking caper simply wouldn't go away. Coulson didn't go through developed vetting for obvious reasons, even though all his predecessors and indeed his successors have: they knew he wouldn't have passed. That he thinks he may well have seen top secret material and also sat in on national security meetings just shows the contempt Cameron felt for all the criticism he came in for over his hugging close of Coulson. He felt, just as Blair and Brown did when they sent commiserations to Coulson over his resignation from the Screws, that this phone hacking business was just part of the greater game. No one got hurt, apart from a few celebrities, and who cared about them?

Cameron's continuing loyalty was reciprocated in full. Coulson was "disappointed" with the Sun's coming out in favour of the Tories, as it was more about Labour losing their support than the Tories gaining it. That the paper did it on the day of Gordon Brown's speech to the Labour conference for maximum effect went unmentioned. Indeed, on the whole he felt that the Sun's coverage wasn't obsequious enough, apparently forgetting that on election morning the Sun splashed with a take on the Obama hope poster, claiming Cameron was the country's "only hope". Attempting to make further mischief, Coulson also claimed that a Guardian executive told him "not to write off" the possibility the paper could endorse the Tories, something Alan Rusbridger responded to by tweeting, Coulson fashion, that no one at Kings Road could recall such a conversation.

Remarkably, when he could remember certain details, he often seemed to be mistaken. Coulson complains bitterly in his witness statement (PDF) that following the Matt Driscoll tribunal ruling "it prompted a torrent of publicity in which I was repeatedly branded a bully". Considering that at the time only the Guardian, Independent and Private Eye so much as mentioned the finding of the tribunal, this is just ever so slightly hyperbolic. Likewise, he thought his answer to why there couldn't possibly have been a secret deal between News International and the Conservatives over the BSkyB bid was compelling: why did Vince Cable become business secretary with jurisdiction over approving it when someone else could have been put in place? The obvious answer is that it was part of the deal when the coalition was formed. In any case, if Cable had to be removed from his role over his apparent bias, why wasn't the same process followed over Jeremy Hunt, who had previously said he wanted to act as a cheerleader for the Murdochs? And why is Hunt now still being defended to the hilt when the case against him is far more compelling that it ever was against Cable?

Coulson's evidence was summed up when he said that he was "too busy" to divest himself of the shares he received in News Corporation as part of his severance package. He was working far too hard to be bothered to ensure there was no possible conflict of interest in his role, apparently immersing himself fully in the detail of his job, and yet now he can barely recall much of what was he was doing. He was the very definition of an unreliable witness, but it was precisely this approach that will have delighted Downing Street. How Cameron must be hoping that Rebekah Brooks takes a similar tact tomorrow.

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5/10/2012 09:21:00 pm | |

Wednesday, April 25, 2012 

The call of the Hunt.

Well, I think it's fair to say that was just ever so slightly disappointing.

After yesterday's fireworks with James, and I can't help picturing advisers and politicians running around Thick of It style while he was giving evidence about the Fred Michel emails, the hope was for more of the same from Keith himself. Instead, what we got was much the same performance he gave to the media committee, albeit without the crap about how this was the most humble day of his life. There were the long pregnant pauses, the occasional thump of the table, and also the same failures of memory. He couldn't for instance remember that David Cameron back into 2008 had interrupted his summer holiday to pay a visit to the mogul on one of his yachts, although thankfully Wendi Deng, not called upon this time to swat a twat with a pie, did recall the happy event and jogged his memory.

Likewise, he'd also forgotten completely about meeting with Mrs Thatcher back in 1981, right at the point at which he was jockeying to take over the Times and Sunday Times. Strangely though, despite being unable to recall what was discussed at this personal tete-a-tete with the prime minister, Murdoch is absolutely certain that Woodrow Wyatt was wrong to claim in his diaries that he had asked Thatcher to "bend the rules" on his behalf. Harold Evans, who Murdoch went on to claim had begged him to tell him how to edit the paper, relates how this meeting with Thatcher, details of which were only released earlier this year, is inexplicably not part of the official history of the Times. Any suggestion that the takeover would otherwise have been referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, as it should have been, had this meeting not happened is quite obviously untrue.

That sort of thing just isn't Rupert's style. Moreover, with the possible exception of the above, when The Sun had not yet quite become the behemoth it was to be during the 80s, he hasn't needed to directly ask. As Paul Keating has said, and as Robert Jay threw at Keith, you don't make deals, or at least not in so many words; you have understandings that are in place until they are no longer to his benefit. Wyatt understood this as Murdoch made his "deal" with Tony Blair; it didn't matter that the Conservatives had cleared the path for him to build his empire, the political wind had changed. As long as Blair was amenable to his business interests, and he was, then he would switch his paper's support. It's true, as John Rentoul has said, that Murdoch didn't get everything his own way: he was blocked from buying Manchester United, and having come to a similar "understanding" over there being a referendum on the European constitution, Blair subsequently went back on it. The point was that as Alastair Campbell has said repeatedly, almost anything was worth it if the end result was that the Sun front page on the morning of the general election didn't have the Labour leader's head in a lightbulb on it.

Murdoch's power became such that the politicians had to go to him, not the other way around, hence the grating shtick from before that he wished they'd leave him alone. Blair flew round the world, Cameron went to his yacht, but once in power it just became too embarrassing for all concerned. Spin doctors had to tell BBC journos not to film Blair hugging and kissing Rebekah Brooks, Murdoch had to go in the back door of Number 10, Jeremy Hunt had to hide behind a tree. If you were to believe Keith, then all this nonsense about him controlling politicians through his newspapers is a myth created by the Guardian and Independent. Any suggestion from past editors and employees, like Andrew Neil or Martin Dunn to the contrary just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Only occasionally did he spout the most easily disprovable nonsense, as the new quote now residing at the top of this blog demonstrates. Really, Rupert? You've never once promoted Sky in the Sun, or torn shreds off the BBC in its pages? Are you sure you don't need a bit of a rest before you continue?

While he will indeed continue tomorrow, something even more hilarious was happening over in the Commons. Jeremy Hunt not only had the gall to stand up and give a statement on why he should still be a minister, he told the House that his special adviser Adam Smith had "unintentionally" gone too far in leaking and passing various incredibly helpful bits of information about what was happening with the BSkyB bid to Frederic Michel. Despite Hunt last night claiming that he had done nothing wrong, with the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg on Newsnight more or less saying that Michel was a Walter Mitty figure, the following morning Smith had to be the sacrificial lamb. Dennis Skinner's bluntness doesn't always score points, but he was dead right in his observation that when "posh boys are in trouble, they sack their servants".

Hunt of course had absolutely no idea what his SpAd had been up to. What's more, his following of all the due process, consulting Ofcom when he could have just waved the bid through proved that his decision had indeed been "quasi-judicial". It didn't matter that in the emails his apparent stalling was explained as "[Hunt] very specifically said he was keen to get to the same outcome and wanted JRM to understand he needs to build some political cover", his behaviour had been of the very cleanest calibre. Michel was just doing what all lobbyists do, which is exaggerate their influence and try and pass themselves off as being just as powerful as those making the actual decision. That Michel was passed information before it was released to the markets that was identical to that subsequently released, or that he was informed of questions that were going to be asked in parliament before it happened was just over-eagerness on Smith's part. It also doesn't matter that the ministerial code is crystal clear on how ministers are responsible for the actions of their SpAds. The only person who can judge Hunt is Lord Leveson himself.

The absurdity of Vince Cable being removed from his role in deciding on the BSkyB bid for "blatant bias" on the back of one boastful comment while Jeremy Hunt stays in his job despite his collusion with News Corp being documented in black and white can only be explained by how if Hunt goes, it's another of Cameron's human shields that's bit the dust. While Gordon Brown was allegedly "declaring war" on News International, Cameron was setting out on how he wouldn't just respect Murdoch's business interests, he'd actively help them. He kept his side of the bargain, right up until he was forced into ordering the Leveson inquiry by a scandal that News International imagined they could bury. Murdoch's vengeance for that is not yet complete.

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4/25/2012 07:22:00 pm | |

Tuesday, April 24, 2012 

Hell hath no fury.

And so the vengeance of the Murdochs begins. For those who, like me, imagined that the Leveson session with Murdoch junior would just be a re-hash of his repeated denials that he was ever told anything about any aspect of his job as executive chairman of News International, then I think it's fair to say that we've pleasantly surprised.

First though, the stuff we've already gone over umpteen times. The early stages were dominated by James's insistence that everyone had misinterpreted, misunderstood and misreported the emails (page 27 of his witness statement (PDF)) that looked as though they drop him in it, even though he hadn't read them at the time. You see, the contemporaneous note written by Julian Pike of Farrar & Co wasn't detailing a conversation that Colin Myler had with James at all; it was in fact what Myler had said and Pike was simply noting that Myler had met with Murdoch junior!

Documented in his witness statement is just how unquestioning he was of the reason for having to pay Gordon Taylor £350,000 in damages; he was "content" with what he says Myler and Tom Crone told him, and it was "appropriate" for him to rely on them to deal with it. They didn't tell him that this case didn't involve Clive Goodman, and he didn't ask; he didn't see the "for Neville" email, despite both Myler and Crone saying that they showed him it; he says Crone and Myler were "very keen" to settle yet he didn't inquire any deeper about why they were so desperate beyond the bare minimum that he says they told him. As much as you believe that James couldn't care less about the newspapers he was also supposedly in charge of, this hands-off, completely incurious approach just doesn't ring true. Regardless of the company you're running, when underlings come to you and says you've got to settle a legal action for a total sum of just less than a million including costs, the idea that you don't inquire, that you don't ask questions, that you don't read the whole of emails is just completely unbelievable.

Asked by Robert Jay whether he was in effect complicit or incompetent, he responded that he had been given "repeated assurances" that hacking was in the past and that he only had enough information to settle the Taylor case. Which, as far as it goes, was pretty much admitting to the latter.

Except, as the rest of Murdoch's evidence showed, he simply can't be described as incompetent. For the most part his dropping of Jeremy Hunt into the mire was pitch perfect; it was only when expertly asked by Jay what he thought of Hunt's department's help with the bid for full control of BSkyB that he allowed himself a revealing laugh.

This then is the start of the new Murdoch offensive. Having realised that in the short-term there is no way they'll be able to take full control of Sky, the family and all it controls has decided to take the entire political class down, or at least attempt to. There wasn't just the 163 pages of emails between Frédéric Michel and James Murdoch showcasing the contact between News Corp and Jeremy Hunt's team, making a mockery of the idea that he was in any way operating, as he told the Commons and as Gus O'Donnell ruled, in the "quasi-judicial" manner required of him, there was the revelation that James had personally made his case for the deal going through to David Cameron just three days after Vince Cable had been removed from his role. Add in how Alex Salmond had also apparently said he would be lobbying Hunt to let the Sky deal through, in effective exchange for the continuing positive coverage he was receiving in the Scottish Sun, and the ruling parties north and south of the border are both having their below-the-counter dealings exposed.

Just how much the takeover of BSkyB by News Corp would have changed the game is shown by the name chosen for the project: Rubicon. Had it been crossed, News Corp's domination of the British media would have been complete. As Nick Davies writes, the Murdochs thought they had it all sown up. The Sun's decision to endorse the Conservatives was taken jointly by James, Rebekah Brooks and you suspect with rather less input from Dominic Mohan and Tom Newton Dunn. This was intimated to David Cameron weeks before the paper itself let its readers and the world know. For his part, Cameron had already made clear that if elected he would cut back Ofcom and do the same to the BBC, the pet hates of a certain James Murdoch as made clear in his MacTaggart lecture. Cameron may not have abolished Ofcom as he said would, but he has cut it back, while the licence fee has been frozen. The only problem that remained was that Vince Cable was in charge of the decision over the takeover, and he was minded to send it to the Competition Commission, at the very least delaying it for months. Then the Telegraph had the wizard idea of sending undercover journalists to MP's constituency surgeries, and the Tories had their excuse for handing the decision over to "cheerleader" Hunt.

Rupert Murdoch may well have never warmed to Cameron, but he was increasingly leaving the decisions to James, or being persuaded to give the Conservatives a try by the ever clubbable, networking Rebekah Brooks. Keith has always been an arrogant hypocrite, yet he wouldn't have got where he was if he wasn't a supreme manipulator, and he always has something extra subtle left in reserve if he needs it. He would never have barged into the offices of the Independent and ranted at Simon Kelner for running an incredibly benign advertising campaign stating that he wouldn't be the one deciding the result of the election. That was the absolute height of News International's chutzpah, believing that they were untouchable to the point of rubbing their opponents faces in it. James today said he and Brooks went on their adventure because he was enraged at how Kelner had done it despite receiving "of my family's hospitality for a number of years", something that you can only characterise as resembling the mafia's attitude towards respect and slight.

Tomorrow sees the real Godfather giving evidence, and David Cameron must surely be having a sleepless night.

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4/24/2012 04:44:00 pm | |

Thursday, March 03, 2011 

Hoist by the Telegraph's petard.


Say hello to your new overlords, remarkably similar to the old ones.

When it comes to great examples of being hoist by your own petard, we now truly have one to overshadow all the others. The Telegraph couldn't possibly have known when it sent its undercover reporters out masquerading as constituents in an attempt to extract some juicy gossip with which to fill space in the run up to Christmas that Vince Cable would be indiscreet enough to boast that he had "declared war on Rupert Murdoch", yet it was still stupid enough to run parts of the surreptitiously recorded conversation instead of spiking the entire exercise. It was only too easy then for the strangely omitted part to be leaked to Robert Peston, and so with it went crashing down even the outside possibility that Cable might block News Corporation's bid to swallow BSkyB whole.

You do have give credit to Jeremy "Berkeley" Hunt, though. Just as there was never any chance of the deal being blocked by a Conservative government already as cosy with the Murdoch press as New Labour ever was, so it would be a blown raspberry too far to just wave the deal through. No, there had to be a sacrificial offering, even if it was so minute as to not even come close to appeasing the other media gods expressing their wrath at the potential of even more market share being clawed away. Hence Sky News, hardly the most cherished part of the satellite company from a Murdoch perspective, is to be sheared off and guaranteed almost exactly the same level of independence as the Times and Sunday Times were back in 1981 when the condition of their sale was the creation of a board of directors who were meant to have the ultimate say over the hiring and firing of editors. A year later Murdoch sacked Harry Evans without deigning to ask the board of their views on the matter. The one difference is that neither a Murdoch nor a News Corporation employee can sit as chairman, thereby guaranteeing the channel's complete impartiality for perpetuity.

It's nonsense of course, although as Steve Hewlett writes you can't help but admire its elegance. The new Sky News holding company will have the exact same shareholding as News Corp currently has in BSkyB, the same shareholding which ensures that the likes of the Sun treat the broadcaster as all but one of its own. In any event, even the most ardent Murdoch loathers, and that includes myself, would be hard pressed to claim that Sky News has ever been anything but independent from Keith, slightly right-of-centre general view of the country notwithstanding. Its impartiality has long been guaranteed by Ofcom and its predecessors, leaving the possibility of Murdoch turning it into a British version of Fox News moot. Not that there's anything to stop News Corp in 10 years time from dumping this new arrangement and starting from scratch - indeed, they've only agreed to licence the brand for 7 years with an opportunity for another 7 once those are up.

By then the media environment will have been transformed irrevocably, and Murdoch will be in all but dominant control. It's worth remembering that the BBC recently signed a deal which froze the licence fee at its current rate until 2016, ensuring that it will have to stretch itself ever more thinly in order to carry on doing just what it does now. No wonder then that the deal has so terrified the smaller players, who came together in an unprecedented coalition to push for the deal to be rejected. Today's announcement is essentially their worst nightmare come to life: the plurality test supposedly reached, there's nothing to stop News Corp from bundling together more and more of its products. Want the Sun or the Times along with your Sky television, telephone and broadband? Even if you don't, you'll probably end up getting it. Just as much as the newspaper industry has begun to start stripping out the bulk sales that have for so long distorted the figures, the spectre of a new version of the price wars of the 90s hovers back into view, just when they reach the point of not being able to afford to go through it all again. The Barclay brothers probably have deep enough pockets to ensure that the Telegraph can survive, but the Independent and Guardian, different target markets or not, would be put in even more trouble.

The perverse situation that has been reached is that the government has essentially decided that what's good for Rupert Murdoch is good for Britain. This might make more sense if Sky was actively investing in original programming and creative content for its channels, except as Mark Thompson pointed out it only spent a paltry £100m on new productions last year, while splashing the equivalent of the whole of ITV's programming budget on marketing. You can't have failed to notice the launch of Sky Atlantic, advertised absolutely everywhere incessantly, a channel that will show nothing but the best that err, America has to offer. The Sky Arts channels are the only high-brow investment that Murdoch has almost ever made, and they were originally an outside introduction. Everything else has resulted in a race to the bottom, one which has had the effect of coarsening the nation along with it.

Worst of all is that simply isn't a way back once Sky has been gobbled whole. Murdoch might be 80 and destined to meet the reaper before too long, but the power his empire will have over governments will continue regardless of who steps up afterwards. Unlike Silvio Berlusconi, none of the Murdoch clan appear to have political aspirations; they've learned how to get their way without seeking office themselves. By wielding an ever bigger market share, the ability of governments to operate without having first gained their approval will be even further diminished than it currently is. Already we've seen with the Metropolitan police's pitiful initial investigations into phone-hacking at the News of the World just how entrenched the reciprocal relationships between the main powers in the land have become, and with this deal they'll be even fewer places to turn to. Democracy, when it comes down to it, can be sold just as cheaply for short-term gain as everything else.

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3/03/2011 11:59:00 pm | |

Wednesday, December 22, 2010 

Shorter Sun editorial on Vince Cable.

(The original follows below, as Sun editorials are not properly archived.)

The first duty of a Government (sic) Business Secretary is to be partial and sycophantic towards Rupert Murdoch.

Vince Cable displayed neither of these qualities in his rant against News Corporation's attempt to buy the shares in BSkyB it does not already own.

By stripping from Cable his important media responsibilities and handing them to the culture secretary Mr Jeremy Cunt, someone who has shamelessly brown nosed us, the normal equilibrium of Government (sic) has been restored. For this we give thanks to the quick thinking of David Cameron and his fluffer, Nick Clegg.

Instead of prancing around on the BBC, Vince Cable should just fuck off.



THE first duty of a Government Business Secretary is impartiality and fairness.

Vince Cable displayed neither in his rant against News Corporation's attempt to buy the shares in BSkyB it does not already own.

It was a massive misjudgment by a minister in a post that demands rigorous objectivity.

News Corporation is The Sun's parent company, so we declare an interest.

But the issue is not whether Mr Cable likes our company but whether he was capable of doing his job properly when by his own admission he is so biased.

The principle would be the same for any company upon which the Business Secretary was sitting in judgment.

For a Cabinet minister to talk of launching a "war" against a firm just to satisfy his own private agenda was disgraceful.

For the punishment to fit the crime, Mr Cable should have been at the very least demoted.

Instead, the Business Secretary has clung on but been stripped of his important media responsibilities.

At least by letting him stay in the Cabinet - on the principle of keeping your friends close but your enemies closer - David Cameron stops Mr Cable rocking the Coalition boat from outside.

Foolish Mr Cable has only himself to blame for his humiliation.

On Saturday he will be clowning around on TV's Strictly Come Dancing Christmas special.

After that, perhaps it'll be time for the Business Secretary to Foxtrot Oscar.

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12/22/2010 10:26:00 pm | |

Tuesday, December 21, 2010 

He fought the war and the war won.


The Vince Cable "going to war with Murdoch" furore is one of those wonderful occasions in politics where absolutely everyone, with the exception of the person at the centre of the storm is in the wrong.

Seeing as the Telegraph kicked the whole thing off, we may as well start with them. There really is something desperately pathetic and certainly unethical about sending round hacks posing as constituents, not to expose any kind of serious wrongdoing but to instead just to secretly record gossip which can then be splashed on the front page for a cheap story in the run up to Christmas. Reading the censored transcript you can even note that Cable asked for what he was saying to not be quoted which the Telegraph completely ignored, something it would have almost certainly followed had he been talking freely to journalists. Rather than this being Cable spouting nonsense, boasting or showing off as the likes of Julian Glover have put it, it was instead him being perhaps indiscreet with two people he thought were Liberal Democrat voters. At worst he's exaggerating his influence and power in claiming he'd be able to bring down the coalition as a nuclear option by resigning, and very few politicians are guilty of humility. It's not even as if Cable said anything as originally reported by the Telegraph which the more enterprising journalist couldn't have found out and written up, even if without direct attribution; there are disagreements in any government, and anyone who isn't completely signed up to the Cameron agenda can see that their numerous reforms are going much too far far too quickly. These are hardly original thoughts, even coming from a minister.

Quite why then the Telegraph decided to omit Cable's one notable and arguably deserving of public knowledge comment, that he was going to war against Rupert Murdoch over the proposed News Corporation takeover of BSkyB, only for a "whistleblower" (read: disgruntled Telegraph hack) to leak the complete transcript to Robert Peston is a mystery, or rather isn't. Unless the Telegraph was holding it back for tomorrow's paper, something no one seems to believe, even though they have more secretly recorded conversations with MPs, then the only reason it decided not to include it is for the reason that they would have rather had someone as business secretary apparently prepared to block the takeover which they themselves oppose than say, Jeremy (C)Hunt, whose views on the constricting nature of our media ownership laws are already on record. It's a wonderful insight into how journalism, even on what used to be known as the broadsheets works: self-interest trumps everything else, including a politician potentially abusing his power.

The problem with that view is that the idea that politicians ever make decisions on their merits rather than either ideology or short-term advantage is fairly laughable. Vince Cable would have been absolutely right to block Murdoch's bid to fully own Sky on the grounds that he already has enough of a stranglehold over our media, regardless of what the European Commission thinks, even if he was against the takeover as a matter of principle. If you want a truly independent decision made, rather than just a "quasi-judicial one", as the business secretary's oversight was until today so deliciously referred to, then give it either to a judge or a quango rather than a politician. All that's been achieved by moving media and telecoms policy from the Department of Business to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport is a passing of the buck, albeit one which will delight both Murdoch and the Conservatives themselves, safe in the knowledge that Hunt rather than Cable can be relied upon to make the right decision.

That, more than anything, is the real lesson from today's antics. You simply can't be in any variety of government and be against Murdoch, let alone threaten to go to war against him, especially if you favour not having your voicemail messages listened in to. This is exactly why we've had the miserable sight of both Ed Miliband and John Denham rushing out to condemn Cable, even as Labour gets chewed to pieces in the Sun, as they still believe that one day it'll be their turn to bask once again in the warm glow of Murdoch media support.

As for the coalition itself, both Cameron and Clegg know only too well that Cable is the only remaining Liberal Democrat fig leaf in the cabinet. Removing him would have exposed Clegg and his main cronies entirely, something he simply couldn't countenance. Cameron will probably be secretly delighted; the decision over BSkyB given to Hunt to wave through, Cable emasculated and the prospect of having a true believer in David Laws ready to step in once he's been given the all clear. The real worries, as from the very beginning, remain with Clegg, knowing full well that should the coalition fall apart it's his party that'll suffer, not the Conservatives. Should Cable return to the backbenches he could well lead the discontent within the party, something that for now at least has been postponed. Whether that possibility becomes an inevitability remains to be seen.

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12/21/2010 11:19:00 pm | |

Tuesday, October 26, 2010 

The not so slow death of the BBC.

Rightly overshadowed last week by the far more grievous cuts being made to government spending, the surprise capping of the BBC licence fee at its current level until 2016/17 still came as a nasty shock, and one apparently foisted on the corporation by the government with little warning. We were solemnly informed that negotiations that would usually take a year of back and forth between government and managers, with input from outside interests and the public were conducted in just three drama-filled days, with everyone other than the BBC left out in the cold. Indeed, S4C, the Welsh-language channel which the BBC agreed to takeover the funding of was only told about its new erstwhile owner after the deal had been done.

While criticism was relatively muted, mainly due to how the BBC was at the bottom of most people's priorities as they tried to digest exactly what the cuts and benefit changes might mean for them, it was still apparent that the BBC had came out of the battle for the worse. The only bright spot was that it had managed to fend off having to fund the free TV-licences for over 75s introduced under Labour, which had it gone through would have meant more than £566m being sucked out of the corporation's £3.6bn yearly budget in an instant. Instead it managed to negotiate, supposedly with the help of sympathetic Liberal Democratic MPs, to take on the cost of running the World Service and BBC Monitoring from the Foreign Office, as well as the aforementioned S4C. Even saved as it was from having to impose such potentially draconian cuts to services, this still leaves the corporation having to look for further savings of £140m a year, the equivalent of a 16% cut in real terms over the duration of the fee settlement, slightly below the average 19% cut in government departments' spending.

The very making of that comparison is something that previously the BBC would have resisted. It might be funded by the taxpayer, but its independence from government always has been and supposedly remains cherished, even if it's the government that decides what the licence fee will be during each charter review. Simply involving the BBC proper in the spending review and not just its sections which it had control over was an attack on that independence. As the Guardian argues, that independence may always have been a mirage, yet it's always been and remains one which should have stayed in place. If that alone wasn't enough, then the incorporation of the World Service into the BBC's News output proper raises just as many questions and contradictions. The BBC is essentially being asked to act as the Foreign Office's limp propaganda arm whilst at the same time remaining scrupulously impartial. The public certainly wasn't asked as to whether they would like a portion of their licence fee to be spent on overseas broadcasts which have little to no relevance to them. The only real winners are those listening abroad, who can now have confidence that the message they're listening to is funded by the British taxpayer rather than the government itself, with all the massive difference that will entail.

Mark Thompson, attempting to recast the BBC's submission to becoming all but just another government department in the best possible light, deployed every favourable point in his armoury yet still failed to make a convincing case for having made the best possible deal. True, as he states, it both prevents an active cut in the licence fee itself, something much feared, and puts the BBC on a stable footing until after the next general election, outside of further political manoeuvring. That however is the best that can be said for it. Thompson claims that the BBC couldn't expect to be "untouched by the wider pressures facing the country", yet it already had been prior to the further cuts decided on the bounce at the end of the spending review, agreeing not to take up the rise in the fee which had been pencilled in under the previous government, while its "Putting Quality First" report was a retrenchment strategy before it knew it had to make any extra efficiencies. Thompson said in his MacTaggart lecture that "[A] pound out of the commissioning budget of the BBC is a pound out of UK creative economy", something which he appears to have turned full circle on in a little over two months.

The only other incredibly slight positive that can be taken from the deal is that it doesn't leave Sky in quite the massively advantageous position they must have hoped for, and which the Murdochs must have trusted on gaining in reward for their slavish adherence to Cameron during the election. Make no mistake though, come 2016-17 the difference between the still coasting BBC and its competitors is going to be massive. The BBC was already planning on cutting back its spending on both foreign imports and sports rights, and with the savings having to come from somewhere while the costs of the former increase exponentially, you can see all but the few protected events crossing to satellite. Sky has already bought up the rights to all of HBO's back catalogue, and snapped up the next series of Mad Men more recently. While it's already become apparent that many managers at the Beeb will soon be leaving their posts, finding £140m of savings a year purely from their oversized pay packets and through efficiencies is a nonsense. 6 Music, saved from closure by the BBC Trust, will almost certainly be back in the firing line, as will other services which the private sector simply can't or won't provide. With no pay rises being possible without cutbacks in programme budgets, the workforce itself will either have to be cut further or will be militantly unhappy, as it already is over the changes to the pension system.

All this bodes ill for public service broadcasting in general. The innovations that will inevitably surface between now and 2016-17 will further constrain the BBC as it finds itself unable to find extra funds to provide content for them. This, along with the all but of end of its independence is what will most hurt the corporation. Remove its ability to change with the times, abolish its defining feature of rigorous impartiality and you have something which will fade into irrelevance and simply end up all but asking to be put out of its misery, which seems to be exactly what the Conservatives had in mind from the beginning. They seem to be playing just as long a game as Thompson and friends themselves thought they were. The BBC's slow but inevitable death has just come a step closer.

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10/26/2010 11:10:00 pm | |

Thursday, September 16, 2010 

Slow start to the death of the BBC.

Just last month the Director-General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, finally did what he and the corporation should have done a long time ago: they came out fighting. During his MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh festival, Thompson defended the BBC's unique funding model, mocked James Murdoch and attacked Sky's increasing media dominance and failure to fund original British programming outside of sports and news, with the killer fact that despite now being the largest UK broadcaster by revenue, it spends the equivalent of ITV's entire programming budget on marketing while putting only £100m into new home-grown features, or about the same as Channel Five does despite Sky having fifteen times the turnover.

Less than three weeks later, what happens? The BBC Trust meekly submits to a zero-percent rise in the licence fee over the next two years, which even the hawkish culture secretary Jeremy Hunt finds to be thinking too far ahead, agreeing only to the first year, with a decision to be made about 2012/3 at a later date. Not that the BBC should suspect that this will change anything come the licence fee settlement to be secured in 2013: most predict that if anything, the licence fee faces being cut. The freeze is despite the last fee settlement, agreed and signed by Tessa Jowell for the last government, which pencilled in a 2% rise next year and between a 0% and 2% rise the year after.

Well, why not, some might ask. Every other publicly funded body is being asked to identify savings, ready for the cuts which are just around the corner. What's more, isn't it about time that the BBC spent the licence fee more wisely, cutting back on the highly paid executives and star talent, trimming the fat and getting into line with the current economic climate? That, it seems, is exactly the sort of argument which the BBC was anticipating and so has reacted to, avoiding any possibility of the government falling out with the corporation by not embracing the new spirit of the age. And it's true that some executives, especially on the radio side of things, have been receiving more than they probably would in the private sector, mainly thanks to how successful the BBC has long been and continues to be in that sector.

The problem is, as Mark Thompson outlined in his lecture, that the BBC has already been responding both to outside pressure and to an internal realisation that it's been spreading itself too thinly. Thousands of jobs have gone over the last six years, it's made many of its top stars take pay cuts or refused their exorbitant demands in order to stay (for which see Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley crossing over to ITV, although describing them as stars is perhaps pushing it), it's tackling its pensions deficit, triggering the planned strikes and it wants to go even further, as its own Putting Quality First document set out. Those cuts and changes already proposed a radically different BBC, one where it effectively emasculated itself in some areas, and also went against its very supposed principles of providing different unique content which the private sector either wouldn't or couldn't. While the BBC Trust saved 6 Music, at least for now, the Asian Network will be closed at the end of next year. Now the freeze in the licence fee effectively means the taking of a further £144m out of the corporation's current budgets. True, if the BBC was to close or privatise a couple of more worthy targets, such as either BBC3 or Radio 1, neither of which even come close to providing a unique service unavailable elsewhere, then that entire £144m could be reallocated. Sadly, those seem to be cuts which the corporation is too stubborn to even begin to consider.

If this sacrifice is intended to endear the corporation to the coalition come the next fee settlement, then it seems to be an incredibly short-sighted gesture. Mark Thompson made an argument against a cut in the fee which applies just as well to the freeze during his MacTaggart speech:

But do not believe anyone who claims that cutting the licence fee is a way of growing the creative economy or that the loss in programme investment which would follow a substantial reduction in the BBC's funding could be magically made up from somewhere else.

It just wouldn't happen. A pound out of the commissioning budget of the BBC is a pound out of UK creative economy. Once gone, it will be gone for ever.


It also reckons without the influence which Murdoch is going to wield in two years time, let alone the deal already done which led to him switching support from Labour to Cameron's Conservatives. All signs point by then to News International having swallowed Sky whole, with Vince Cable apparently unlikely to intervene. Claire Enders, the respected independent media commentator has said that this will represent a "Berlusconi moment", referring to the control which the Italian prime minister has over his country's media through his ownership of vast swathes of it. This would be even more drastic if Ofcom had been abolished or had its powers slashed, as Cameron suggested should happen prior to the election, picking on it directly as one of the quangos which should be cut down to size. While little has been said since the election, it could well be one of the targets in the general spending review. If politicians were scared of taking on News International when it owned only 39% of Sky, as they claim to have been as an explanation as for why they did next to nothing about allegations of phone-hacking at the News of the World, then the potential full spectrum dominance it will have in just a couple of years' time makes it even less likely that such abuses of power would be followed up and investigated to the fullest.

The enraging thing about the BBC is that from a position of power, with mass public support as multiple polls attest, it almost always plays the weakest hand possible. For 39p a day (approximately what £145.50 breaks down to) it represents incredible value for money, regardless of whether it's television, radio or their online content which you prefer to use, and almost everyone in the country uses on or the other and would miss it incredibly were it to slowly fade away. That's what the management essentially seems to be agreeing to, the slow death of a public service broadcaster which is too weak and pathetic to fight its own corner effectively. Perhaps in that respect it almost deserves what's coming.

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9/16/2010 10:35:00 pm | |

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