Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council, is meeting with the top financial officials of the euro zone to discuss Italy. Anxiety is mounting. Italy has the largest national debt as a percentage of GDP in the euro zone, after Greece. It ranks 8 in the world at 119%. To compare, Britain ranks 22 with 76.5%.

The interest hikes of the ECB do not help the indebted nations of the south, although they are needed to curb inflation in the more prosperous north. This underscores, once again, the need for a central financial ministry for the euro zone. It is just impossible to operate a currency in the way the euro is currently managed. It is a futile road to excess sovereign debt, followed by default, recently re-named restructuring. Eventually the money lost in bail outs to the south, which these countries can never repay, will accumulate to financially cripple the north at some future point.

This is a graphic case of not being able to have the cherry without the cake. Euro zone countries will have to get real and accept that you cannot have monetary union without political union. Maybe President Van Rompuy and his officials will touch on this in their talks. Meanwhile the outlook for Italy is uncertain.

We do not yet know what Rupert Murdoch will have to say when he arrives in London. I suspect he will be surprised by what he finds. Last evening I saw a brief clip of him walking in a blue shirt talking to a deferential U.S. reporter. Their interview style is a good deal less confrontational than in the UK. It was clear in those moments that he had not taken on board what has happened here.

It is not just the fact of closing the News of the World and containing the damage. The crisis for Murdoch is out of control and spreading. It is not just his paper that has become toxic, it is his whole grip at the centre of affairs in our country; the Murdoch brand itself is toxic and the management of Rebekah and James has lost all credibility. The entire political class is now gunning for his network. It is not just about a Sunday paper any more. Everything Murdoch is subject to challenge by enquiries, regulators, the police and parliament. The damage has spread to those who may in the past have shown favour, or received it, including the Prime Minister and one of Britain’s most lauded policemen, John Yates. The list will grow. More arrests are expected. More disclosures predicted.

Murdoch is not used to this kind of hostility. Nor has he before witnessed, from the receiving end, that rare and awesome power, so difficult to stir  and so rarely seen, British national anger. He needs to prepare himself. He described his confidence in Rebekah as ‘total’. There was a time, just a little while ago, when such a declaration from him would have been the end of it. Now his declaration has no effect at all. Like a devalued currency in the marketplace, his word now counts for nothing. His first task must be to restore something of its value.

Well, now we know he cares. He is coming to take control. What a shambles awaits him.

BSkyB approval delayed and probably never, with Ofcom now involved. The golden goose of the NOTW dead. Servile politicians now biting back and ravaging the carcass of his spent omni-power, to the point where the votes come to those who revile him, not to those he endorses. The police are everywhere, enquires are springing up, terrible further disclosures are apparently yet to come.

Doors, once oiled to swing open on his approach, will now be shut in his face. Everywhere, like in the Arab Spring, there is that happy feeling of liberation from the shadow of the threats from his empire to smash careers it helps to build, so as to have more targets to smash again. All that is over. His family, that is James and Rebekah, have screwed up totally; the Murdoch brand has become toxic.

But he, HE, is now en route. When he gets here, his voice and his voice alone will be heard, his orders will be those, the only ones, the empire obeys and his genius, which built the mighty network, may just be able to save it.

Wait and watch and wonder. None will do that more anxiously than the movers and shakers in 10 Downing Street. If he turns on them, they could be in trouble. Because into the growing list of who knew what and did nothing, will come a new class of person to add to embattled Murdoch executives. Ministers of the Crown.

Three days ago this Blog likened the crisis to Watergate. The theme is today taken up by at least one national newspaper. It is a word you will see more and more often in the dramatic days to come.

There is so much happening so fast in this viral crisis now gripping the Murdoch media, the police and the government, with all its threads and layers, that it is almost beyond the scope of this style of blog to tackle.

Nevertheless we can explore angles and today we look at the politics. Because make no mistake, this is now a political event of unusual intensity which could yet become a government crisis. More especially so because it is Ed Milliband, not David Cameron, who now speaks with the authority of public opinion and an instinct for the turn of events, whist the Prime Minister reels under catastrophic pressure. Ed sets the agenda, asks the questions and voices the fears. David reacts and responds, but is always behind the curve in this high speed drama.

The change of political fortunes for Ed Milliband is remarkable. Days ago his leadership was questioned. Now those who voted for him and wondered why they did, know why. Those who did not back him, wish they had. He has suddenly risen to the occasion and grown in stature; calm, measured and convincing. Just the kind of opposition leader every government wants to avoid.

Cameron is fighting back, but he has been too slow to announce his enquiries; too unwilling to apologise for taking to the very heart of government a man about whom there were so many doubts and who is now under arrest; too late to say obliquely that Rebekah should go; too wrapped up in process to admit that News Corp control of BSkyB is now a non-starter and too timid to confront, when it might have counted in his favour, the unsavoury political grip of a Darth Vader Empire, which put  its people under such pressure to obtain stories that desperate minions resorted to criminal intrusion and bribery of the very worst kinds.

The political damage, like the seeping hull of the Titanic, may at first seem containable. But wait, for the waters will rise. There will be more arrests, then charges, then trials, then the outpouring of evidence in court, challenged by dynamic defence, pointing the finger this way and that. Beyond that come two enquiries which will rake over the coals and start new fires of public indignation. It should all be over in about three years, just in time for the voters to have their say at a general election.

Whether Cameron can survive that long or whether the coalition can hang together till then, are questions to which the answers grow daily more uncertain.

The view from the perspective of one of the world’s media giants is, at the very least interesting. His empire is under public attack at a key point connected to the source of his wealth and the seat of his power. For the moment he stands firm in public, outraged and demanding of resolution, backing his people whom he regards as extended family and to whom he is intensely loyal.

In private he dwells in pensive fury. Pensive because he knows where things could go; fury because he knows that his own ruthless and determined streak has been misunderstood and taken too far. The crisis, for Murdoch, has three elements. Money, crime and power.

Money is easy. Shares will lose value, revenue may drop a little from its world total of $20 billion and the takeover of all the shares of BSkyB may be blocked, become too expensive, or be otherwise impracticable. The News of The World is a damaged brand,  because it is a scandal sheet which has become itself the scandal. But time, a clear out, contrition and a revamp can  put all that right. In total the money is a nuisance, but can be managed.

Crime is tricky, because it is now outside the control of the family. Individuals should bear the brunt, as corporate crime would be difficult to prove or to prosecute. Those individuals are already earmarked, or if not, those to be protected certainly are. Rebeka is with the latter and the hapless Andy Coulson is clearly the chief fall guy. But in the end the guilty are punished and the business moves on.

Power is the big one. This is the essence. Up till Thatcher and her war with the unions, Murdoch had the amount of influence accorded to newspaper proprietors the world over. But then he took on and roundly defeated the Fleet Street unions, led by the feisty Brenda Dean.

With aggressive tactics, which included firing 6000 striking workers, setting up a complete new production facility at Wapping, bringing an Australian haulage firm, TNT, to distribute papers by road, doing a no strike deal with the ETC and working closely with the NPA, under Lord Marsh and with the support of the Thatcher government, Murdoch delivered, following on from the failed miner’s strike, the decisive blow to trade union power in the UK. From that moment he was politically the Gold Standard.

His support determined the future of governments. In his bank he stored the fortunes of his business, but in his palm he held the fortunes of political parties. All sought his ear, craved his backing and attended his soirees. He was, literally, among the most powerful twenty men and women in the world.

Suddenly all that is changed. No politician on this side of the Atlantic can afford to be seen in his company or at a function organised by any of his minions. MPs discover that their careers will be enhanced, not by supporting him, but by attacking him and all he stands for. This will get worse as public enquires begin.

That is what will hurt Rupert Murdoch the most. All the rest may be fixable, but the influence, the ear bending, the sense of command and the power to control the big political picture has gone. Whether he cares enough to try and retrieve it will determine, more than anything else, what happens next.

This is now escalating out of control into a Watergate style crisis which goes on and on to some historic climax. What began as a phone hacking issue for celebrities, which interested few outside the circles of the hacked, has now become a viral drama. Nobody knows where it is headed. All we know is that is now spinning in unforeseen directions.

It now looks as if it can do real damage to the mighty Murdoch empire. These media empires do have a cycle; they rise, get too big, if not in size, then for their boots, then they fade, sometimes like Conrad Black with a spectacle, but mostly slowly diluting, like Beaverbrook, Northcliffe and Kemsley. The problem with Murdoch is that he appears more powerful than governments and his employees believe that no matter what they do, he will always be there for them, as long as whatever they do sells newspapers. At the centre of the current storm is the future ownership of BSkyB.

At this point the coalition enters the frame. Twice. First because of Cameron’s closeness to Andy Coulson and, to a lesser extent, the beleaguered Rebekah Brooks. Next because of the apparent intention of the government via Jeremy Hunt to approve the takeover of BSkyB by News International, when not a single person can be found in the whole country who thinks this is other than a bad idea. Moreover everybody remembers that when Vince Cable said some very rude things about the Murdoch set up, he lost that part of his job. Now it looks as if he was right. Why did Cameron not back him?

Finally we come to the Metropolitan Police. It now appears they are in the pay of the Murdoch press. It is not put like that. It is said that the police receive payments for providing the newspapers with information. It is, they say, legal. Really? Are you sure about that? Can it have anything to do with the fact that the original phone hacking investigation was not exhaustive as claimed by Scotland Yard, but at best a fiasco of ineptitude and at worst a cover up of a valued and lucrative income source?

We have now reached the stage where every time we turn on the news, we hear some new and repellent disclosure of how the most distraught and vulnerable are subjected to these illegal intrusions. We hear too how evidence is mounting up that those, very high up, who claimed ignorance and feigned outrage, actually know and knew then, a good deal more than they have thus far let on.

There is lots more to come.

There is something not quite right with all this. When I was young there was no such thing and elderly people were cared for by their families, of which they were a part. There was good support for those on their own because the demands were not universal. On the other hand, now it is assumed that everyone will have to be cared for. This is due to the fact the everyone lives longer, but that is not the sole cause. There is also the issue of people living very impaired lives at these greater ages, so that much more help is required for their care.

The Dilnot Report will set out an analysis of the problem as well as offering solutions. Proposals that the personal contribution should be capped at some arbitrary figure, perhaps £35,000 and the threshold of assets raised to £100,000 look interesting.

Unfortunately in the present financial climate anything which costs money is unwelcome, even if worthy. Moreover caps and thresholds smack of bureaucracy, paperwork and more cost. Nevertheless this report offers positive ideas and should be taken seriously. So ought the realisation that universal benefits of any kind in the modern welfare state are not sustainable. Benefit must go to those who need it and be paid for by those who do not. Simple. It is also the mark of civilisation and human decency. It should be what the mysterious Big Society is about.

How many times in years gone by have I complained about completing consent forms for the school time after time when one of my children was to go on a trip. Why cannot one form cover everything? Well now it can.  Nearly two hundred pages of guidance have been reduced to eight. The government wants to encourage school trips and let teachers work in an environment were common sense prevails and the view of risk is mature.

This is wonderful news. Leadership of any kind, including being a teacher, requires the exercise of judgement, the acceptance of a degree of risk and due precaution to keep such risk to realistic levels. We, all of us, accept and protect against risk throughout our daily lives. The government is entirely right to free teachers and parents from excessive aversion to the risks of normal and engaged life. It is also good to see that the Health and Safety Executive have attacked the barmy risk averse culture, which includes fear of wet grass at Wimbledon, pointing out that these inane excuses and ludicrous prohibitions have nothing whatever to do with them or the laws under which they function.

Of course people must be protected from exposure to negligence and carelessness which endanger life and limb, but this has to be done with common sense and a recognition that there is a degree of risk in everything. To eliminate it altogether is make life hardly worth living.

The American legal system is different to that in the UK, to the extent that information is not only released during the preparation of the prosecution, but it is freely debated in the media. The Americans hold that justice must at all times and at all levels be public. There is a lot to commend this, other than the conditions for an unbiased and fair trial.

We are now told by the prosecution, that the accuser, who is the star witness, has been lying and even lied to the grand jury. It is difficult to see how there can now be a trial, but if there is, how on earth there could be a conviction. Nothing in this whole drama can be taken for granted, yet there does now seem to be a real prospect that M. Strauss-Kahn will soon return to France.

That will significantly alter the political dynamic, not just in France, but across Europe. The financial and political talents of this man, notwithstanding a reputation over women which is not without blemish and questions, are sorely needed. At the moment the Euro zone is on the wrong path. Lending more money to Greece without a rational acceptance that it cannot pay its debts, is simply going to make matters worse.

It is disturbing to see that rioting has returned as a regular feature in Northern Ireland. Scotland has its own brand of sectarian tension which finds its expression in football rivalry. The divide is between Protestant and Catholic.

Both are branches of Christianity, yet the passions behind the tension and the acts of violence and abuse are wholly un-Christian and fly in the face of everything which the faith holds dear. They also fly in the face of any moral interpretation of a difference between right and wrong. Finally they break not one but several laws.

Yet on they go, generation after generation. Sometimes there is a lull until new activists reach maturity and stir up latent passions. Whilst both the protestant and catholic churches say the right things, they do not do enough. This is trouble on their patch, about their dogma, theology and faith and they have an over-riding responsibility to practice what they preach and take a joint lead in bringing an end to  the disorder, as well as  the warped interpretation of their scriptures which drives it. Over the decades, even centuries, the clerics have done far to little to lead their flocks to pastures of reconciliation. They need to get a move on.