There is a lot of mud that's going to stick to Cameron thanks to Murdoch!
Can his reputation survive, it's doubtful?
Were deals done or not?
Maybe it went like this:
- The Murdoch press would throw its weight behind the Conservative Party in the 2010 general election, and in return the Conservatives would back known Murdoch policy objectives.
- Cameron's Conservatives started to throw their weight behind a number of News International policy objectives just before the election.
- August 2009, nine months before the election, Murdoch's son James launched an attack on the BBC (Rupert Murdoch's greatest commercial rival) in a speech at the Edinburgh Festival.
- Jeremy Hunt a few days later, wrote an article for The Sun calling for the licence fee to be frozen and demanding that the BBC cut back on its commercial activities.
- Notoriously, Rupert and James Murdoch resented the way media regulator Ofcom interfered in their business.
- July 2009 - surprise, surprise - Cameron announced that the Conservatives would abolish Ofcom(Independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries).
- The best evidence concerns Conservative Party support for Rupert Murdoch's third key commercial objective: the takeover of BSkyB, announced in June 2010, just one month after the general election.
WOULD I TELL FIBS?
IT WAS ONLY A LITTLE ONE!