Across the pond

This blog is a follow-up of a blog I wrote early this morning entitled, The Times tells ‘The truth about Tony and Gordon’. For most of the day I have been unable to blog because of technical problems. So I came back to this story just now.

And, I have to beign by admitting that I made some serious mistakes, in my early morning story. But I still hold to my view, that this morning’s Times is one of the best I have read since it was taken over by Rupert Murdoch. It is, once again, a serious newspaper, worth reading by anyone who wants to keep up to date about natioral and international news.

But what I did not realise until just now, that this issue of The Times will go down in history, as the time that Rupert Murdoch paid off Tony Blair, which enabled Rupert Murdoch to make many millions during the stewardship of New Labour in Downing Steet.

But it must have been a lot, because the Blairs have bought yet another million pound home. And this by supposedly Labour supporters.
What I missed this morning is that the Times main exclusive story, the serial rights for Cherie Blair’s memoirs, was, in fact, Murdoch’s payoff to Blair. So that today, Blair, although not so rich as Murdoch, is far richer than he could have become by doing the rather important, but not very well paid job, of being Prime Minister.
The Times story includes some brotherly advice from Blair to Brown in his present problems.

But, as I found out later in the day, The Times Exclusive, is trumped by The Sun, which proclaims a- a world exclusive. Now, as it happens, The Sun is also owned by Rupert Murdoch.

From which I conjecture that the sum of money that Murdoch has paid over to the Blairs is so large that it cannot be recouped from what he hopes to gain from The Times serialisation. So Murdoch, shrewd businessman as he always was, is citting his losses on the Blair payoff, by filling The Sun pages as well.

The tone of The Times articles is very much that Blair currently is advising his long-standing colleague, Gordon Brown, as he faces the biggest reverse in the Labour Party’s fortunes for forty years.

The tone of The Sun article is quite different.

It is putting the boot in on his old colleague Gordon Brown, whom Cherie never liked. So the political message to Sun readers, is ‘don’t vote for Gordon Brown’.

Readers, you can judge for yourself, because I will include The Sun World Exclusive at the end of this story.

But meanwhile you should be asking just how big was the Murdoch payoff to Tony Blair? Since I am a realist I know that I cannot possibly find out today. But I do know, from past experience, that decent journalists will find out. And that it will be a sum large enough to buy a house in central London.

Just at the time when many Labour voters are having difficulty in fighting off the banks and building societies who are trying to repossess their homes.

Point made. Below the Sun’s World Exclusive.

GORDON Brown HOUNDED Tony Blair out of office, the wife of the former PM dramatically claims today.

Cherie Blair accuses her husband’s successor of “rattling the keys above his head” as far back as April 2004.

She fought to stop him standing down.

Cherie, 53 — whose autobiography is being serialised in The Sun — says the two ARE talking now.

But she admits: “I thought he was putting too much pressure on Tony to leave when Tony wasn’t ready.”

In her book — and a bombshell interview you can read by clicking on the block above — the mum of four finally breaks her silence about life in Downing Street.

She exposes the truth behind the rifts, the rivalries, friendships and fallouts.

Top QC Cherie says: “Tony used to say in terms of ability that Gordon was way ahead of everyone.

“The irony is, if they’d only worked as closely as originally agreed, Gordon’s chance would have come sooner.”