A Deal With the Devil? Murdoch and New Labour (Part 2)

Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics.

Sign up to The Rest is Politics Plus to enjoy ad-free listening.

Receive a weekly newsletter, join our members' chat room and gain early access to live show tickets.

Just go to the restispolitics.com.

That's the restispolitics.com.

He's on the cover of Time magazine as King Kong storming the Empire State Building.

That is Rupert Murdoch.

A man with a pretty insatiable need for competition, for power, for money, for influence.

He's a hero in New York, and he's the villain in New York.

If you can get the sun, then that was going to be politically helpful.

He is not really a Thatcherite at this point, and he becomes a Thatcherite because Thatcher is there, but it's also good copy.

She's using him, and he's using her.

Rupert is a hard bastard, and he only respects you if you're a hard bastard, too.

You can do deals with Murdoch without saying that the deal is being done.

And I kind of think that's where we work.

The man who has existed in opposition to the establishment is creating a new system.

Murdoch is Mana Method, a cold-eyed manipulator.

Everyone thinks they can be the one to get him to behave, to stick to doing what he said he would.

It will never work.

Hi there, it's Alastair.

Part two of our series on one of the most powerful men in recent memory, Rupert Murdoch.

Now continues.

This week we're looking at his involvement with British politics in the Maine at the end of the 20th century.

First with Margaret Thatcher and then yes, my own interactions with him and Tony Blair and the way he chose to support us.

Here's a clip from that episode.

To hear the full thing and get the whole of the miniseries and the benefits of a trip plus membership, sign up at therestispolitics.com.

And meanwhile, back in my country, we have the arrival of Margaret Thatcher.

My view about this thing about Murdoch's power, and of course I think Murdoch loves the fact that this line line gets run.

Murdoch has always backed the winning side in UK general elections since he first started in our media.

I think he backed Margaret Thatcher out of ideology whereas when we get on to our time later I think he backed us because he knew that we were going to win.

But Thatcher's role was important.

Larry Lamb, who was one of his first editors, later knighted by Thatcher for services to pro-Thatcher propaganda.

He was the guy who relentlessly slammed this thing about the winter of discontent, the label for the time, the end of Labour's term in office before Thatcher.

And also, she realized, I think, straight away that having this tabloid media support and becoming a bit like the New York Post had become for Koch, if you can get the sun for her in the same way, which my God, she did, then that was going to be politically helpful.

Yeah, and I've always had

the feeling that Murdoch's politics

are being shaped at this point.

I mean, he is not really

a Thatcherite at this point.

And he becomes a Thatcherite because Thatcher is there, because Thatcher is articulating what he may sense, what he may feel, but

he hasn't gotten to that point yet.

And then she comes along, and I think

he says, you know, this is, I think he says thinks two things.

Well, this makes sense to him politically, but it's also good copy.

You said it in the first episode that the whole thing about his political profile was driven by money, his business interests and his understanding that you needed politics at certain stages and of course that becomes absolutely the case when it gets on to trying to buy the Times and the Sunday Times.

The Times I mean today it doesn't have the same reputation, not least thanks to Murdoch I would argue, but generally seen as the paper of record, the paper of the establishment and so forth and the Sunday Times then being edited by this I think great journalist journalist Harry Evans, who won all sorts of awards, run amazing campaigns.

And Murdoch already has the beginnings of the reputation that he now has in terms of interfere, editorial interference, using newspapers for commercial purposes, etc.

But he has by now this relationship with Margaret Thatcher.

And the one thing that could stop him, he thinks, other than the other bidders, getting the Times and the Sunday Times is a referral to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.

So his goal is to get the papers without that.

And he's got a very, very important ally.

I mean, there's an interesting thing, too, that because you might logically ask, here's a guy who has been successful.

I mean, we know him.

We know his main interest is success.

His main interest is in money, where he has proved himself in the tabloid business.

So why would he want the Times?

Why would he want this paper that is very the opposite of a tabloid?

And I'm still not sure, because even to the extent you say, well, because

he wants influence, but he believes his influence

comes from success, from mass market.

But here he is.

So why does he want this?

Why does he want a

why does he want prestige?

Well, you said in the first

episode that you want sort of a sense of global domination.

If you've got a very successful, well-read tabloid that is speaking quotes to the working man and woman, and you've got a broadsheet that is speaking to the, for want of a better word, the chattering classes, the rest of the media, the politicians, the establishment, you've got a very, very powerful megaphone.

And I agree with you.

I don't think he was a full-on Reaganite, Thatcherite conservative at this stage.

But I think he became it because of this melding, as you say, of his business and political interests.

No, I think it's true, but I think that there's other some other divided thing

that goes on here.

His character is much more Times-like than it is sun-like.

He is not a sun reader, personally.

No interest in sport, none.

No interest in pop culture.

None.

He loves gossip, though.

Yeah, he loves gossip, but he's not interested in that kind of gossip.

He's interested in insider kind of

business, political.

So he is a Times reader, not a sun reader.

So I think that that's part of it.

But hold on.

Is he maybe resenting?

So this is the period with the News of the World and the Sun, where he became known, private eye coin, this phrase, the dirty digger, which he doesn't particularly like.

Is this the place where he's kind of doesn't quite like the image he's got and that the Times isn't just about power, it's also about...

Because I've always got the sense he doesn't really care about that.

You know, I think that there's another thing going on about the establishment.

You know, he's obsessed with this idea of the establishment.

Wanting to be part of it or wanting to bring it back?

Well, I think that's it.

He doesn't want to be part of it.

He wants to reject it.

But I've always felt he wants to reject it because he thinks

that the establishment is inauthentic because he's the establishment, because he is the real thing.

And

I think it just gets mixed up

in his head who he wants to be.

And it's always

a kind of going back and forth between respectability and

rebelling from respectability.

So he gets the paper.

The Monopolis and Murders Commission does not have this bid referred.

He gets the papers, the Times and the Sunday Times.

And just a background, you know, it's owned by the Thompson, the Thompson family, a Canadian family who has been put through the ringer by the Times and by the unions.

Yeah, and

that becomes significant later.

And I mean, Harry Evans, we're going to talk about Harry Evans now, who was the editor of the Sunday Times, the Lidemide investigation that people still talk about, in a real kind of bit of a legend in British journalism, then the editor of the Sunday Times.

And one of the things that Murdoch wants to do, or seems to want to do, is to get him to be editor of the Times.

probably partly because he's a good journalist, but I think more because he wants to avoid Harry Evans becoming a force of opposition during the takeover process.

So he gets this, he takes over.

You knew Harry?

Very well, yeah.

What's your I like Harry a lot.

I thought he was a great journalist.

I genuinely thought he was one of the last great journalists.

I think he was probably never going to be successful under Rupert Murdoch because I think Harry was somebody who actually wanted to believe.

There's a great phrase.

I can't remember again whether it's your book or somebody else's where somebody talked about the thing with Murdoch is this thing where you're aching to believe.

You're aching to believe that he's, this time he's going to keep to his promises.

This time he won't interfere.

And I think Harry was aching to believe, but very quickly established that probably Murdoch didn't want him, had never really wanted him, and pushed him out.

I always think that Harry kind of another one of those people who wanted to be like Rupert Murdoch, who wanted to, who saw himself as well as a journalist, a

mogul, a manager, a mogul, a mocker.

We're going to need a glossary at the end of this.

And so he sort of thought, well, Rupert Murdoch, you know,

we're not that far apart.

I can get along here.

And Harry, who would also come to the U.S.

and

achieve

significant position.

He became a CEO.

And then his wife, Tina Brown, who also

cut a figure in New York.

And I, too,

I liked Harry in New York and used to see him

on occasion and would,

and he would then often say the same thing to me.

We would exchange pleasantries and he was a fan of my Murdoch book and I was a fan of his Murdoch book.

And then Harry would say, but my wife really hates you.

That's probably because you said in your book

that she vied with Murdoch for cynical amorality.

I thought that was way over the top, I've got to say.

Listen, let me, one of the, um, this is a great observation.

Ranald MacDonald, who was the publisher of the Melbourne Age, who was also a cousin of Rupert Murdoch, and he says, everyone thinks they can be the one to get him to behave, to stick to doing what he said he would.

I played with him as a boy.

I know him.

It will never work.

Just to add, all of his wives thought that.

All five of them.

So he makes all these promises.

He makes all these commitments.

They're underpinned by law.

Let's be very clear.

He goes into the Times.

The whole Times deal is dependent on him saying that he will not interfere editorially.

Now,

let's just, in hindsight.

Day one.

So let's think about this.

Him not interfering editorially is like, do we have to do the scorpion and the frog at this point?

I mean, Harry's sadly now dead, but he used to say that he interfered on day one.

And he did it.

He tried to change something very minor in an editorial.

And he said, it was basically, instead of saying that, couldn't we say it this way?

And it was just a way of saying, if you really think I'm not going to interfere, forget it.

And at the end of Harry's book, Good Times, Bad Times, he lists all the promises that Murdoch made.

on editorial freedom.

Nobody but the editor can hire and fire.

Nobody but the editor can instruct journalists.

The editor has to have a set budget to work within.

And he then quotes something that Murdoch said to one of Harry's senior executives.

I give instructions to my editors all around the world.

So why shouldn't I in London?

And the guy replies, because you gave legal undertakings.

And he says they're not worth the paper they're written on.

So that's the jiu-jitsu of the stele.

And he's coming to Thatcher with her help.

It's not even Jiu-Jitsu.

At least Jiu-Jitsu seems to think, well, you don't see it coming, but you see it coming here,

even more so.

So he does this.

He violates every aspect of this.

This agreement is thrown out immediately, ignored.

It's traduced.

It has no standing or bearing.

Immediately, 30 years later, he will make the same agreement with the Wall Street Journal, and they accept it.

Totally.

They usher him in with the red carpet.

Harry had some great observations.

The other thing, by the way, that the Thatcher thing does is it signals to her cabinet and to the rest of the political establishment, this guy has to be treated differently.

And of course, that's something that he'll exploit many times.

Harry said this.

Maxwell, who we talked about in episode one, Maxwell was the meetax.

We're back to the same stiletto.

Murdoch is the stiletto, a man of method, a cold-eyed manipulator, issues promises as prudently, he says, as the Weimar Republic issued marks.

But he's now there.

He's now there.

Essentially, he's breaking the law, by the way, in hiring and firing, interfering editorially.

But kind of, he's now got impunity.

But you kind of...

But why does he have impunity?

I mean, that's

always...

That has brought the line that these papers are essential to her political success.

So she's currying favor with Murdoch.

She's basically...

She's using him and he's using her.

Okay,

which is the perfect, that's the perfect balance that you want.

And that's...

I mean, if you're Murdoch and if you're Thatcher.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, and they would both say to themselves, we're not doing anything wrong.

We had this.

We'll come on to this when we talk about my time with Tony Blair.

We're not doing anything wrong because she would say, I'm not...

I'm not giving him anything on policy because actually I think it's probably quite a good idea if he owns the Times

because he's going to be on my side.

She's thinking that's politics.

He's thinking I give her the support.

So everybody is working the system.

They're creating and working the system.

Creating the system.

Yeah, yeah.

So he's creating the man who has existed as in

opposition to the establishment is creating a new system, therefore a new establishment.

And they're all convincing themselves that they are insurgents and they're agents of change.

And in many ways, they are.

Okay.

Thatcher was an agent of change.

You can hate it, but she was.

To hear the full episode, sign up at the restispolitics.com.