A paper tiger?

Rupert Murdoch flew into London today. In my view the visit has enormous significance.

Murdoch inherited a regional newspaper group and from the time he took it over in 1953 began to expand. In 1969 he bought the News of the World and the Sun, and in 1981 The Times. Thus he owned the largest Sunday paper, the largest Daily, and the voice of the Establishment.

Murdoch supported Mrs Thatcher – he was to change the face of Fleet St by fighting the unions himself – but it became increasingly apparent that it paid for a politician to keep him on side.  Neil Kinnock made a tremendous effort to woo him, but to no avail, and he stuck by Thatcher’s successor John Major. The Sun’s headline before the election ‘If Labour win tomorrow will the last person to leave Britain turn the lights out?’ and the day after Major’s surprising success ‘It was the Sun wot won it’ are classics, but no one doubted the power of the former or the veracity of the latter.

In 1997 Tony Blair, despite being certain to win, flew half way across the world to address News Corp executives. It had become a political tenet that you could not win an election without Murdoch, and Labour stayed in power until Murdoch began to support the Tories. He had the power of a 17^th century monarch.

Which is why it is significant that he has come to England: years ago he would have summoned everyone to him. His son James, 38, who runs the European operation, cannot be trusted in a crisis without his 80 year old daddy.

There are three significant moments to this crisis:

-          The public were OK about them hacking into the messages on celebrity voicemails. The results were entertaining and let’s face it you have to be pretty stupid not to change your access code from 1234. It was when it was revealed they had hacked into the ‘phone of missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler and of dead servicemen’s families (‘our boys’) that things changed: this upset just the sort of person who reads the News of the World.

-          Ten years ago there would have been a conspiracy of silence in parliament. This time Ed

 Miliband, leader of the Labour Party, clearly saw that there would be no election until 2015 when

 Rupe would be 84 and he would still be the underdog, took what will seen to be be a bold step and

 condemned News International, inviting Mr Cameron to do the same.

-          Cameron, reluctantly given his close ties with the Murdoch group and Rebekah Brooks, its CEO,

 ditched them and authorised two inquiries, saying he would have accepted Brooks’ resignation.

These developments would have been almost unthinkable even weeks before.

So is the man who changed newspaper production, bringing it into the modern world, who changed the face of broadcasting with BskyB, whose word could determine elections, finally a busted flush, a paper tiger? Given his age and the ineffectiveness of his children, I rather think he is. If that is so, it will be the most profound change to British public life since Mrs Thatcher.