What’s all this…is News International showing the strain of David Cameron’s failure to deliver the votes in the election? The papers are full of reports at James Murdoch’s unexpected arrival at the Independent’s offices in Kensington High Street, after The Indy put out special editions with the headline ‘Rupert Murdoch won’t decide this election‘.
Bizarre: the soul of the British people has become a duke out between an ex-KGB agent and an Australian-American family. Kinda like the Premier League when Chelsea play Man U (or when the Arsenal board play themselves), Remarkable us Brits get a look in.
The Sun’s fat and early call for the Blues is yet to come in convincingly, and while it may well come good come election day, there is plenty to fight for. And, yet, ironically it was Sky News that was pushing hardest and fastest for the original leader’s debates. These are the debates that were always going to benefit it as the number three news player, but it turned out benefited the number three political player aka Nick Clegg who owes nothing to anybody in the media establishment.
Anyway you look it, the Murdoch-Indy bust up is curious. Why on earth should the massive News International care about the little, little Indy? Of course the Indy is going to rail against News International — this is the very company that is trying to do it down. (Ex-boss Les Hinton once said of the Indy’s 20th birthday that he was attending an event he had tried hard to prevent).
And while anybody can get riled by what’s written in the press, why didn’t anybody talk James Murdoch out of going in and making his point in person?
Read also Steve Hewlett’s very good commentary on the subject…
PS Anybody got a pic of the Indy’s wrap around today? I seem to be in the wrong bit of London… Dan
