MEDIA STUDIES
The Tories were uncooperative, New Labour
wasn't but Blair will lose his place in the Sun
STEPHEN GLOVER
The courtship between Rupert Mur- doch and Tony Blair — which culminated in the Sun's endorsement of Labour on Tuesday — has not been a very edifying affair. It began soon after Mr Blair became leader of the Labour party in May 1994 and acquired as his press spokesman Alastair Campbell, a former political editor of the Daily Mirror. Mr Murdoch, who had grown rather to despise John Major, was predis- posed in Mr Blair's favour. As early as August 1994, he told the German magazine Der Spiegel: 'I could even imagine support- ing the British Labour party leader Tony Blair.'
The first meeting between Blair and Murdoch took place at Mossiman's, the private restaurant in Belgravia, on 15 September 1994. According to Andrew Neil, who describes the occasion in his recently published autobiography, the Aus- tralian press tycoon took to the Labour leader. Mr Blair, for his part, indicated that his party would not pass onerous media ownership laws. 'Well, he certainly says all the right things,' said Murdoch (in Neil's version of the event) after Mr Blair had gone. 'But we're not letting our pants down just yet.'
There were several further meetings between the two men. I can recall seeing Mr Blair and Mr Murdoch chatting happily together at a party in the garden of Peter Stothard, editor of the Times, at the end of June 1995. A few weeks later Mr Blair made his famous trip to Hayman Island, Australia, where he addressed Mr Mur- doch's executives. He said all the right things. Since then Mr Blair and Mr Camp- bell have had innumerable meetings and luncheons with Murdoch editors and senior journalists. They have munched their way through countless lamb chops, and downed a thousand glasses of chardonnay.
Mr Murdoch has calculated that a Labour government presents no greater threat to his business interests than would a Conservative one. There may have been a deal between Mr Blair and Mr Murdoch which goes further than the general under- standing quickly arrived at during that Mossiman's dinner. It is probable that Labour will give a more favourable wind to Mr Murdoch's ambitions in terrestrial digi- tal television than would the Tories. Mr Murdoch is the leading partner in a consor- tium whose bid is currently being considered.
I don't believe that Mr Blair in his heart feels any affection for Mr Murdoch or the Sun. In December 1995 Cherie Blair unguardedly told the columnist Ann Robinson at a party that she never read the Sun and 'wouldn't have it in the house'. This surely reflected Mr Blair's own predilections. But whatever his personal feelings he has forced himself to be as agreeable as he knows how to Mr Murdoch and his minions. The reason is that he believes the Sun helped Labour to lose the last election, with its vicious and sometimes rather witty anti-Labour jibes. His press man, Alastair Campbell, is strongly of this view. So is that eminence grise, Peter Man- delson.
The evidence is hardly overwhelming. In fact there is very little evidence at all. In the end it mostly comes down to hunch. It is impossible to know how many voters the Sun converted to the Tory cause in the final weeks of the 1992 campaign. In a paper published by Nuffield College, Oxford, Martin Linton has aggregated all newspa- per polls in the campaign. He tentatively suggests that there was a swing to the Con- servatives among Sun readers of 51/2 per cent in the week leading up to the election on 9 April. The swing was more marked among Daily Mail readers. No one can say to what degree these last-minute defectors were influenced by their newspapers.
It seems reasonable to suppose that a newspaper may have an effect on readers' sympathies over a longer period of time. According to Mr Linton, 48 per cent of new Conservative supporters in the three months before the 1992 election came from the Sun. The paper, which had previously strongly criticised the government, was by this time rooting for it. But would these readers, faced by the prospect of a general election, have gone over to the Tories in any case? We can't be certain one way or It was 1991 when we last met, was at not?' the other. Messrs Blair, Campbell and Mandelson have taken the view that the Sun had a crucial effect.
But I don't sec that the Sun's qualified endorsement of the Labour party this time should be regarded as a blow by the Tories. According to MORI, during 1996 an aver- age of 60 per cent of Sun readers said they intended to vote Labour. (At the 1992 elec- tion, 36 per cent did so.) A further 10 per cent intended to vote Liberal Democrat. In other words, Sun readers, of whom there are supposed to be some ten million, are already massively predisposed against the Tories. Even if it wanted to, it seems very unlikely that the newspaper could convert many of these to the Tory cause in the few weeks that remain. To make the smallest impact it would have to bash Labour day ill, day out. This is hardly conceivable, given the paper's attitudes over the last two or three years.
In supporting Labour the Sun is reflect- ing the voting intentions of most of its read- ers and confirming its own prejudices. At this stage of the game it won't make a blind bit of difference to the outcome of the elec- tion. Tuesday's announcement was a piece of publicity-seeking calculated to outdo the Labour-supporting Mirror. But this is not a marriage based on love, any more than the courtship was, and in the end the Sun will turn on Mr Blair, probably over Europe.
In my column of 1 February I wrote about the London Evening Standard's unfortunate contempt of court. The paper, s editor, Max Hastings, had been arraigned before Mr Justice Maurice Kay in Wool- wich Crown Court for letting his newspaper publish the names of three men, on trial for breaking out of Whitemoor Prison in 1994, as members of the IRA. This indiscretion had led to the collapse of the trial. The learned judge referred the matter to the Attorney-General, Sir Nicholas Lyell. Cynics assumed that Sir Nicholas would not wish to pick a fight so close to an election with the editor of a newspaper which might — or might not — support the Tories. How they misprized their man! Last week it was announced that the Attorney-General is to bring proceedings against the Evening Stan- dard. If there is soon a Labour Attorney" General, he will surely be obliged to pursue the case. What, or who, can save poor WI now?
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