His master’s voice has spoken! David Cameron’s overseas paymaster Rupert Murdoch has cast his eye over the Tory cabinet and – guess what? – he likes it. To quote the Dirty Digger, “Cabinet picks surprisingly good. Osborne, Duncan Smith, Gove, Javid, Whittingdale, Patel, more women. Few toffs! Great start.” I’m sure Dave will be breathing a sigh of relief, but I couldn’t think of something I’d like less: to know that I’d sucked up enough to Murdoch and received his thanks for so doing. Pass the sick bag.
But let’s examine what Murdoch actually said. What is actually surprising about leaving virtually the entire pre coalition cabinet in one piece? Cameron is known to like leaving things as they are and he was never going to butcher his cabinet, apart from having to replace the useful idiots of the Liberal Democrats, but what about the other stuff? More women? Well, yes there are, not least a right wing hanger and flogger like Patel. The old boy seems to have forgotten the names of any more. Perhaps he’d remember if they got their tits out? But few “toffs?” Now come on.
The cabinet is stuffed full of, as Murdoch calls them, “toffs”. 16 members of the 32 members of the cabinet went to private schools, the same number went to Oxbridge. In fact, 48% of all Tory MPs went to private school. Murdoch’s comments give the lie to his dubious anti-establishment credentials and his alleged belief in a meritocracy. Murdoch’s comments show he not only supports the establishment but he actively supports and sustains it and by doing so he pours cold water over any form of meritocracy.
John Whittingdale is a most interesting appointment as Culture Secretary by Cameron. He is an unreconstructed Thatcherite, a fervent Murdoch supporter and describes the BBC license fee as “worse than the poll tax”. No wonder Murdoch welcomes this “great start”: Whittingdale is the man who will surely seek to reduce the BBC to rubble.
Rupert Murdoch is already one of the most powerful people in the land and he doesn’t even live in it, or pay taxes in it. His life’s work has also included getting rid of the BBC. A Cameron government with a Murdoch sympathiser in charge of the media. You can guess the rest.
Ed Miliband told Russell Brand that Murdoch was “not as powerful as he used to be”. I don’t believe a word of it. If anything, he is more powerful. His reach is not just Transatlantic: it’s global. His TV operation in this country now has a near monopoly on sport, his newspapers just happened to be the biggest selling dailies in the land, tabloid and broadsheet. He has access to politicians at the highest level. He is, in short, a clear and present danger to our democracy.
When Murdoch refers to “toffs”, it’s hard to know what he means. For example, during the election campaign, state school educated Ed Miliband was depicted as some sort of toff in a photoshopped Downton Abbey scene.
I cannot imagine that Murdoch has the kind of feelings that the rest of us do. He can see nothing beyond the bottom line. He tells us what to read, he tells us what to watch, he tells us who to vote for.
He’s a very bad man and supports a cabinet which is undoubtedly in his own image.
