MEDIA STUDIES
Mr Blair used to do anything to charm the Tory press, even laugh at Lord Stevens's jokes. Not now
STEPHEN GLOVER
If this is the end of the affair, it has been a surprisingly passionate fling. Almost since Tony Blair was elected Labour leader, he and his cronies have been nuzzling up to the right-wing press. There were lunches with Lord Rothermere and Sir David English and their editors at Northcliffe House. There were meetings with Rupert Murdoch, who told Der Spiegel that he could imagine voting for Mr Blair, before the Labour leader flew all the way to Aus- tralia last July to address News Corp execu- tives. Blairites were never so happy as when Sir David English wrote in this magazine last October that the Daily Mail and other Associated titles might support Labour at the next election. Sir David recalled how he asked his boss, Lord Rothermere, whether he could conceive of such an outcome: ' "Well, it certainly would not be impossi- ble, David," he replied, having recently come from a two hour one-to-one with the Labour leader.'
This has been a grotesque courtship so far as the Left is concerned, but for the Blairites it was vital. They believe that the Tory press lost the last election for Labour. They may be right. As Martin Linton has written in a pamphlet published by Nuffield College, Oxford (Was it the Sun wot won it?), the biggest swings to the Tories during the campaign period were among readers of right-wing newspapers — the Mail (14 per cent), the Express (eight per cent) and the Daily Telegraph (eight per cent). By contrast, there was no swing among readers of the Guardian and the Daily Mirror. Labour not unnaturally assumes that many readers were persuaded, or shocked, into voting Tory at the last moment. It looks at so-called right-wing newspapers now and notices that a surprisingly large proportion of their readers say that they will vote Labour. At the beginning of 1995, for example, almost as many Daily Mail readers intended to vote Labour as Tory. Mr Blair does not want these people to jump ship at the eleventh hour as a result of scare stories.
Hence the charm offensive — the forced mirth at Lord Stevens's jokes, the finger on Rupert Murdoch's forearm, the heartfelt clasp of Lord Rothermere's patrician hand. Mr Blair knows in his heart that few, if any, of these newspapers will support him on the night. He understands that right-wing editors have appeared to like and admire him largely because they so disliked John Major. He is quite clever enough to realise that Sir David English's piece in The Spec- tator was a delicious tease. But the Blairites' strategy has been to tame the beast rather than to believe that it will ever be possible to lie down with it.
Why the vicious falling out with Mr Hitchens and the Daily Express? It was Mr Hitchens, a veteran of the War of Jennifer's Ear, who discovered that Labour's party political broadcast about that little girl dur- ing the last election campaign had been over-imaginative. He recently took it into his head to delve into Cherie Blair's past, which he believes to be much more left- wing than the Blairites have ever let on. Some people may regard this as somewhat irrelevant to the matter in hand. I must confess I do. But the point is that Mr Hitchens is an old-style political street- fighter who got as good as he gave. There seems little doubt that 'sources close to Mr Blair' briefed at least one newspaper to do a hatchet job on Mr Hitchens. Lawyers act- ing for Mrs Blair have written a letter to the Express demanding a retraction after Mr Hitchens claimed that the Blairs sent their son Euan to a selective school. The Blairs assert that the London Oratory is an ordinary comprehensive, though its head- master says it isn't.
Blairites now apparently want to forget the whole thing, but their counter-attack against Mr Hitchens and the Daily Express was entirely deliberate, even part of a new policy to fight tabloid smears with fire. It is difficult to see how such behaviour is con-
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ducive to happy relations with the right- wing press. Newspapers do not like being threatened, even by governments-in-wait- ing. The same objection can be raised to Mr Mandelson's suggestion that a future Labour government might be forced to curb newspapers if the Tory press 'drips poison' during the next election. It seems that for once in his life Mr Mandelson spoke his mind. Though fellow 'spin doc- tors' later implied he had overstepped the mark, we are left with the impression that the Blairites like the right-wing press a lot less than one might have guessed from all those friendly lunches.
Tory newspapers were anyway drifting back towards the Government. The Daily Telegraph has turned into a reliable ally, save on Ulster. If the Times is not exactly pro-Major, it is hardly pro-Blair either. The Daily Mail was surprisingly supportive of the Government over the Scott report, though sometimes its old, exasperated con- tempt for Mr Major breaks through. As for the Daily Express, the most loyal of the Tory papers over the past few years, it now has a further reason to attack Mr Blair. The Sun is more enigmatic — it is not really Tory at all — but the best that Mr Blair can hope for is to avoid the kind of exuberant mockery heaped on Neil Kinnock by the paper's former editor, Kelvin MacKenzie. Mr Hitchens's dirt-digging and Mr Mandel- son's threats take us back to the world we know. The Tory press does not really like New Labour, and New Labour does not really like the Tory press.
By a margin of one vote the Scott Trust has turned down Mohamed Al Fayed's offer to buy the loss-making Observer for /25 million. The outcome represents a short-term victory for Peter Preston, edi- tor-in-chief of the Guardian and the Observer. He asked for one last chance, and got it. But what can he do? If he sticks with the existing editor, Andrew Jaspan, the paper will continue to atrophy. Yet he apparently fears that to appoint another editor, his third in as many years, might open him to ridicule. His best hope is to try again to persuade David Montgomery to sell him the Independent on Sunday, and merge it with the Observer. If this does not work, Mr Fayed will be back by the end of the year, and this time the Scott Trust may vote in his favour.
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