Across the pond

This morning’s Sunday Times is not sharing the serialisation of Cherie Blair’s memoirs with The Times and The Sun. They have been spending Rupert Murdoch’s money bagging the serialisation rights to the memoirs of Blair’s deputy prime minister, John Prescott. We learn from the long interview story – longer than the extract from Prescott’s memoirs – that, though Prescott told Blair he was a shit, he was really quite fond of the bloke he called, Bambi. Compared with how he felt about Gordon Brown.

So this story amounts to a kick in the ribs to Gordon Brown, as he struggles to govern the country in the wake of Labour’s devastating defeat in the local elections.

As I reported in a previous post, Murdoch’s Sun on Saturday gave quite a different spin on Cherie’s memoirs. Their interview story put the boot in on Brown. Whereas The Times interviewers wrote a measured story, in which Cherie’s main criticism of Brown, was his failure to push hard enough for Blair’s public service reforms.

It is probable that Cherie Blair said much the same to The Sun as she said to The Times. So the difference in the treatment of the stories comes from the different spin put on the story by the two newspapers involved.

So which newspaper is most accurately interpreting the views of the proprietor, Rupert Mundoch Esq?

Perhaps there will be a clue from the coverage of the Wall St Journal, which Murdoch acquired in January. But a search of their website found they had had nothing to say about Cheire Blair or even Gordon Brown for several days.

So there is no hard evidence that Murdoch is trying to hurry Brown out of office.

However, Peter Preston, the former editor of The Guardian, reports in his column in The Observer today, that the new editor of The Times, James Harding, has suddenly flown to New York. Preston thinks that Murdoch might be thinking of parchuting him in to the job of running the Wal St Journal.

He may be right, but it is equally possible that Murdoch has called him in for a chat. To get an informed view of what is happening in UK politics and to tell him what the Murdoch priorities are.

My guess is that Murdoch does not want ot take any public position on the next UK election at this stage. The Labour Party can easily stay in power until the autumn of 2009, and if pressed, until the winter of 2010. By keeping his powder dry, Murdoch has negotiating clout. Whereas if he ran a campaign, it could well result in a revival of public disquiet about the concentration of media power in Britain in his hands.

His judgments are likely to be careful and cautious. But he takes no risks at all in allowing his newspapers to voice disquiet about Brown, because that is what many leading members of the Labour Party are already doing, though quietly. And again my guess is that he has no great entusiasm for the Old Etonians in the Conservative leadership, and he might not be averse to backing one of Labour’s younger ministers in a bid for the leadership.

But that he wil not initiate such a move.

And currently his mind is probably even more focussed on what happens in the US next November.

Which will be the subject of my next blog.