Prime Minister Major: 1990-1997

¶2.1 In November 1990 Sir John Major took up office with what he himself described as a quixotic

approach to the national press.33 He was keen to win their support and closely followed political coverage. But he did not seek a close relationship with proprietors and editors. Instead, he kept his distance, leaving contact primarily to others, especially his Press Secretary, a post held throughout his tenure by a civil servant.

¶2.2 Sir John fared well, initially, so far as newspaper coverage was concerned. The 1992 election

was marked by fiercely hostile coverage towards Sir John's political rival Lord Kinnock. However, it was not long before sections of the press turned their hostility towards him. By the time of the 1997 election, The Sun and The News of the World had unequivocally transferred their support to New Labour.

¶2.3 The Major years are undoubtedly important for the work of the Inquiry in relation to media

policy because it fell to Sir John's Government to consider and respond to the recommendations of Sir David Calcutt QC's reports.34 Many, including Sir John and Mr Cameron, now consider that the response of the time amounted to a missed opportunity.

¶2.4 As Prime Minister, Sir John made a conscious choice not to seek a close relationship with any

part of the media. He did not think it appropriate and, in any event, he did not share a closely- aligned political ideology or personal affinity with any of the media proprietors of the time. In his own words:35

"As Prime Minister, I did not inherit – or seek – a close relationship with any part of the media. I did not go out of my way to engage with the press. This was my own choice, made in part by natural instinct, and in part because the Black and Murdoch press were wedded to a more ideological type of Conservatism than my own. Nor did I engage closely with the Maxwell press or other centre or centrist left titles. This decision was, to an extent, quixotic, since the press are a daily route to the electorate. Nonetheless, a close engagement did not feel comfortable or proper to me and I left relationships with the media largely to the No 10 Press Office – then staffed exclusively by civil servants – and, where appropriate, the Party machine...I did not offer any peerages or knighthoods to any national newspaper proprietors or editors ..."

¶2.5 Sir John explained to the Inquiry his view that in terms of democratic accountability, the

best relationship between the media and senior politicians is one of 'constructive tension'. It should be neither too friendly nor too oppositional. In particular, if the relationship becomes too close it can become the context for exchanges of self-interest: leaks and stories in return

¶I for favourable coverage, as Sir John told the Inquiry had happened to an unnamed politician during the passage of the Maastricht Bill.36

¶2.6 In practice, Sir John did not often meet national newspaper proprietors. He met Mr Murdoch

on three occasions (in 1992, 1993 and 1997 respectively), Lord (Conrad) Black on seven occasions and Lord Stevens twice (and attended four social events at his invitation). He did

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not meet Robert Maxwell at all, although Mr Maxwell did on occasion telephone No 10.37 Strikingly, he not only turned down an invitation from Mr Murdoch in August 1993 to attend a "special celebration" to mark the launch of new Sky TV channels but also discouraged other Cabinet members from attending.38 He met editors and political editors occasionally, typically in the presence of his Press Secretary, and usually for the purposes of explaining a particular policy.39 He could recall hosting only one press lunch at Chequers, on 3 December 1995.40 Unlike his immediate predecessor, he did not confer any peerages or honours on national newspaper proprietors and editors (although the position was different in relation to regional and magazine editors).41

¶2.7 The difference of approach was put into this context by Mr Campbell:42

"You see, I think a lot of this started under Margaret Thatcher, because I think that newspapers were given a sense of power. The numbers that received the peerages and the knighthoods and the sense that they were almost part of her team. I think it changed under John Major, and then I think when we were in power, I think that we – I think we maybe did give the media too much of a sense of their own place within the political firmament when we should have challenged it more".

¶2.8 Lord O'Donnell (as he now is), a career civil servant, served as Sir John's Press Secretary

between 1990 and 1994 before being succeeded by another civil servant, Sir Christopher Meyer. Lord O'Donnell's brief was to present Government policy on an even-handed basis to all members of the media. This approach marked a change from the higher profile approach of his predecessor, Sir Bernard Ingham, and was associated with the return of the Guardian and The Independent to the lobby. In Lord O'Donnell's own words:43

"Well, I was told by the then cabinet secretary, Robin Butler, that what he wanted me to do in the role as press secretary was to lower the profile of the press secretary – as you mentioned, Mr Ingham, now Sir Bernard, had a higher public profile – and to establish very clearly the impartiality of the process. Its relationship with the media needed to change. At the time when I took over as Press Secretary, the lobby briefings had got to a stage where two newspapers, the Guardian and the Independent, had exited the lobby, and my job really was to try and get back to a situation where all newspapers could be represented there and felt able to attend, and indeed the Guardian and the Independent did come back in to the lobby. "So it was trying to establish general principles of the Prime Minister's press secretary being there clearly to present, in an impartial fashion, government policy, and to do that equally to all members of the media, both broadcast and newspapers."

¶I

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¶2.9 The distance which Sir John put between himself and the national press did not prevent his

Government from paying close attention to the press or from seeking to get their message across to the press through briefings. Sir Christopher put it in these terms:44

"...Enormous attention was paid to editors of national newspapers – this extended, to a degree, to regional editors, but not much – and so a considerable effort went into courting them, bringing them around for privileged one-on-one briefings for example. This was in the early 1990s. I believe that that practice has now expanded phenomenally over the years. "So what it came down to was an exaggerated belief in the influence of the front page headline and commentary columns within. There was an absolute belief that newspapers and their editors could win or lose elections depending on how they reported the stories. "I personally believe that that influence is gigantically exaggerated. "So the result was we did pay – we, in Downing Street, did pay a lot of attention, more than I thought was necessary, to trying to pull people on board. And of course the more you do that, the more demanding the editors and proprietors, in some cases, become. So I was always a bit sceptical about that."

¶2.10 As Philip Webster, the editor of The Times website and a former political editor with the

paper, observed in his evidence, Sir John built good relations with the press on his way to Downing Street.45 Once in office, between 1990 and 1992, Sir John received press which he himself thought was appropriate, and regarded as neither especially supportive nor hostile.46 That, of course, falls to be contrasted with the extremely negative political coverage that was accorded to the Leader of the Opposition during the same period.

¶2.11 By 1993, the evidence clearly shows that Mr Murdoch's British titles were writing some very

hostile, and sometimes very personal, articles about Sir John. A selection of such articles was attached to a briefing note which Lord O'Donnell produced for the then Prime Minister on 18 August 1993.47 Lord O'Donnell suggested in the note that Sir John took the opportunity of a forthcoming meeting with Mr Murdoch to communicate to him the matters quoted below. In the result Sir John did not consider it appropriate to do so, not least because of the implied threat, but the document nevertheless gives a flavour of the level of concern generated by the adverse press coverage:48

"Your papers have made matters worse. They have ceased to make rational criticisms of policy. They are now simply anti everything and anti me in particular. (see attached cuttings.) This is bad for economic confidence and hence, bad for business. Longer

¶I term political repercussions difficult to assess. Conservative MPs now see no reason to be helpful to media. [Pressure growing over privacy rules, VAT on newspapers,

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cross-ownership. I am not keen to move on any of these areas but MPs from all parties becoming increasingly attracted to them.]"

¶2.12 Peter Riddell described the coverage of the Major Government as becoming "very hostile".49

¶Mr Webster said this:50

"Well, there were occasions I think where the treatment of certain leaders got a little bit – was over the top, I think. I recall newspaper treatment of Neil Kinnock, John Major, latterly of Gordon Brown, where it got too personal and in a sense I felt that was going a little bit too far. But I don't regret the passing of the age of deference at all. I remember in the late 1960s, when I joined the Times, there was a much more deferential attitude of reporters towards politicians. I am rather glad that is all gone. It's just in some cases I think the treatment has been just a little bit too personal at times."

¶2.13 There were probably many reasons for the change in coverage and the maintenance of its

changed course. Antipathy to the Government's policies and, in due course, the rise of New Labour were probably amongst them. But Sir John's personal relationship, or rather lack of it, with influential media figures of the time was probably also a factor. Mr Murdoch said this:51

"Q. So the support the Sun gave to the Tory Party. not that it was the strongest support, because you, to put it bluntly, weren't that appreciative of Sir John Major" "A. Or his government. Well, we were reading in all the papers of cabinet divisions".

¶2.14 Kelvin MacKenzie, then editor of The Sun, said something similar:52

"Q. First of all, were your relations with or respect for Mr John Major as good as they were with Baroness Thatcher? A. No, they were – no, we didn't have a – no, we did not have a particularly good relationship. He was no Thatcher, John Major."

¶2.15 There was a conflict in the evidence of Mr MacKenzie and Sir John in relation to the content

of a telephone conversation which both men recalled took place late on Black Wednesday.53 Whatever the precise course of the conversation, however, it is noteworthy that the editor of The Sun was amongst those, including HM The Queen and senior ministers, to have been telephoned by the then Prime Minister.

¶2.16 Sir John put it to the Inquiry that there had developed something of a culture of press hostility

to his administration, and personal ridicule of him, which resulted in coverage which went beyond vigorous partisanship, and was not only unfair but inaccurate and misleading. He I cited what he considered to be the mischaracterisation of his Back to Basics initiative as a moral crusade, certainly a depiction which had serious repercussions for his Government,

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and which was associated with (and was claimed as legitimising) highly intrusive coverage of the sexual behaviour of a number of Conservative politicians.54

¶2.17 He also pointed to the caricaturing of the Citizens' Charter:55

"Similarly, a policy to improve the culture of public services was launched under the title "Citizens' Charter". This policy was aimed at improving public services, ensuring courtesy to the taxpayer who paid for them, and improving the esteem in which public servants and public services were held. The press undermined this campaign from the outset, through a total misrepresentation of the facts behind it – led by journalists who seemed to have no experience of public service and little care for it." (emphasis added).

¶2.18 Sir John also pointed to a number of examples of unwarranted press intrusion into his private and family life. These included the following:

(a) intrusion by a tabloid title into the family's holiday home in Portugal to rearrange the furniture, take photographs and publish a story; Dame Norma Major telephoned the editor to seek an explanation but was told that she and her husband had "no right to any privacy";56 (b) an attempt to blag personal information about his son's then girlfriend:57 "on another occasion, my office received a telephone call purporting to be from the A&E Department of a hospital. The caller explained that my son's then girlfriend had been involved in an accident and that emergency surgery was necessary. However, before this could be carried out, it was vital to know whether she was pregnant. Even though, on the face of it, this enquiry was clearly an urgent one, before giving any response my office made immediate contact with my son's girlfriend, who was entirely well and in a meeting. For the record, she was not pregnant"; (c) speculative surveillance of his son:58 "In circa 1996/7, my son was followed repeatedly by an individual on a motorbike, with a long piece of equipment attached to his bike. My son became very alarmed, since this was at a time when Northern Ireland was a much larger security concern than it is today and – through his rear view mirror – he believed the equipment might be a rifle. My son followed the security procedures he'd been taught to follow, in order to "shake off" his pursuer, but to no avail. He therefore continued to drive, and requested assistance from the Cambridgeshire Armed Response Unit who flagged down the motorcycle and pulled it over. It turned out that the rider was a photographer for the News of the World, and the equipment was a telephoto lens. The motorcyclist had been instructed to follow my

¶I son "day and night", in the hope of providing a story."; and

(d) picture manipulation:59 "Following the General Election of 1997, I was on a private holiday. Following a picnic on the beach, I tossed an empty bottle to my wife, who was immediately beside me, tidying up. The following day, a series of photographs appeared in one of the British

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tabloids (from all of which my wife had been airbrushed), accusing me of tossing the bottle onto an empty beach, and thus being a 'litter lout'."

¶2.19 There was also this from Paul McMullan, the former News of the World journalist:60

"Yeah, I was sent to France – because I'd lived there and worked for an agency for a while – to try and track down the woman who took John Major's virginity. This was a while ago. We found her but we couldn't get a picture of her with her new boyfriend. So the idea was she traded in John Major, the Prime Minister, for this French wrinkly. I think the cleaner was in the house, so I blagged my way in and pinched it off the mantle piece and copied it. I remember at the time Rebekah Brooks said, "No, put it back, we're not allowed to nick stuff!" And Piers said, "No, who cares? Well done. We'll put it in the paper." Which is what we did."

¶2.20 Sir John nevertheless fairly also said this about his personal coverage:61

"Q. You refer to your disengagement in the first sentence of paragraph 7. Would it be fair to say, though, Sir John, that you were very sensitive about what was written about you by the press? "A. It certainly would be, yes. I wouldn't deny that at all in retrospect. It's certainly true. I was much too sensitive from time to time about what the press wrote. God knows, in retrospect, why I was, but I was...I woke up each morning and I opened the morning papers and I learned what I thought that I didn't think, what I said that I hadn't said, what I was about to do that I wasn't about to do." "So there was a practical need to know what was going on but did I read them too much? Yes, I did. Was it hurtful sometimes? Yes, it was. Did I think, it was malicious? I think that's for others to make a judgment about."

¶2.21 There was a significant exchange between Mr Murdoch and Sir John shortly before the

election. Sir John invited Mr Murdoch and his wife to dinner because he had been urged by party officials to "woo" newspaper proprietors. Sir John said this about the occasion:62

"...In the run-up to the 1997 election, in my third and last meeting with him on 2 February 1997, he made it clear that he disliked my European policies which he wished me to change. If not, his papers could not and would not support the Conservative Government. So far as I recall, he made no mention of editorial independence but referred to all his papers as "we". Both Mr Murdoch and I kept our word. I made no change in policy, and Mr Murdoch's titles did indeed oppose the Conservative Party..."

¶2.22 As Sir John observed:63 I

"It is not very often someone sits in front of a prime minister and says to a prime minister: "I would like you to change your policy, and if you don't change your policy, my organisation cannot support you". People may often think that, they may often

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react –but it's not often that point is directly put to a prime minister in that fashion, so it's unlikely to have been something I would have forgotten."

¶2.23 When Counsel to the Inquiry explored the nature of the opposition of Mr Murdoch's papers to his Government at the 1997 election, Sir John said:64

"Q ...the Sunday Times continued to support the Conservative Party and the Times' position was more equivocal, supporting anybody who happened to be anti-Europe" A "Well, may I please have a definition of "support"? If you mean, did they perhaps write an editorial saying, "On balance, the least of all evils is the Conservative and you had better vote for them", I think the answer is probably that they did. If you mean: was there news coverage day in, day out, morning after morning, weekend after weekend, hostile, then I would have to say to you that I think it was. So I think I would have preferred to have less of the editorial support and more of the equitable news coverage".

¶2.24 He did also acknowledge:65

"...After all, they had written about the Conservative Party between 1992 and 1997, how could they, in all credibility, have then said, "Despite all we have written over the past five years, we actually invite you to vote for these people we've been telling you are useless for five years"? I think that would have been quite a difficult editorial position to take".

¶2.25 More than one commentator has perceived a cyclical nature in the relationship between the press and Prime Ministers, starting well and finishing badly. Mr Riddell suggested:66

"Recent prime ministers – John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron –have all sought close relations with the media, at various levels, from proprietors, through editors to political correspondents, during their rise to the top. But, when they have been in office for some time, the relationship has soured as media criticism has increased, and each PM has complained about the stridency, intrusiveness and unfairness of the media. Both the initial closeness and later disillusion have been detrimental to the public interest. It would have healthier to have a more distant, workmanlike, relationship throughout."

¶2.26 Mr Webster agreed:67

"Q. You describe, rather like Mr Riddell, a circle whereby recent prime ministers and you name John Major and Tony Blair as initially having very good relations with the

¶I press but eventually becoming disillusioned; would you add Gordon Brown to that list?

"A. Yes, I would, yes. I think in all cases they began with good relations. John Major built good relations with the press on his way to Downing Street. But he became very quickly disillusioned with the press afterwards".

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¶2.27 It would be perverse to suggest that Sir John's relationship with the press was 'too close' in the

sense of too friendly, or such as to give rise to perceptions of mutual favour. It was, however, certainly personal. The lesson many subsequent politicians took from observation of the personal destructiveness of the press towards political leaders such as Mr Foot, Lord Kinnock and Sir John was a complex one. In part, it had to involve scrupulous reassessment of unpopular policy positions. That in itself contained its own complexities: was unpopularity with the press the same as unpopularity with the public? How far did the press themselves convince the public to dislike a policy, and was that fair or unfair? How should the personal dimension of a political leadership position be considered integral to the political? And, most of all, what could be done about any of it? For some at least, one of the lessons taken from these experiences was that previous relations between politicians and the press had been 'not close enough'.

¶I

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Chapter 3 New Labour

The 1992 general election

¶1.1 The Labour Party's media strategy going into the 1992 election campaign did not aim to

win over hostile sections of the media and was positively averse to engaging with News International (NI) in particular. It included some manifesto pledges on media policies to which elements of the press were explicitly opposed, including on implementation of the recommendations in the Calcutt Report and the establishment of an urgent inquiry by the Monopolies and Mergers Commissions into the concentration of media ownership.1

¶1.2 There was, in the event, significant negative coverage of both the Labour Party in general and

its Leader, now Lord Kinnock, in particular throughout the election campaign. Even the victor of that election, Sir John Major, described it as both "a pretty crude campaign" against Lord Kinnock and "over the top".2 The Rt Hon Jack Straw MP, a Labour candidate at the election, described the experience in his evidence in these terms:3

"Now, what the Sun was doing in the 1992 election was working over each senior member of the Labour front bench and this had an effect, and if you were on the receiving end of it, it felt like power. It had an effect in my constituency. I remember doing an open-air meeting that Wednesday and you could feel support falling away, and my majority scarcely moved, although it did not reflect the national swing".

¶1.3 At the climax of The Sun's election coverage were two particularly negative and personal

headlines directed against Lord Kinnock. "Nightmare on Kinnock Street" was followed, on election day itself, by the headline: "If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights".4 As is well known, Labour lost the 1992 election but tabloid coverage in the years running up to election, and in particular The Sun's coverage during the campaign, has remained the subject of controversy ever since.

¶1.4 Kelvin MacKenzie, then the editor of The Sun, famously proclaimed through a headline after

the Conservative victory that: "It's the Sun Wot Won It".5 Rupert Murdoch distanced himself from that; in his own words, he gave Mr MacKenzie "a hell of a bollocking".6 Mr Murdoch said this:7

¶"I just thought it was tasteless and wrong for us. It was wrong in fact. We don't have I that sort of power. I think if you – well, you can't do it now, but if you go after an election and you see a newspaper that's taken a very strong line, particularly the

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Sun, and ask their readers how did they vote, there would be no unanimity. It may be 60/40 one way..."

¶1.5 Lord Kinnock, in his resignation speech delivered on 13 April 1992, blamed his defeat on

the newspapers which had supported the Conservatives, quoting the former Conservative Treasurer who had said that: "The heroes of this campaign were Sir David English, Sir Nicholas Lloyd, Kelvin MacKenzie and the other editors of the grand Tory press". Lord Kinnock warned: "This was how the election was won and if the politicians, elated in their hour of victory, are tempted to believe otherwise, they are in very real trouble next time".

¶1.6 None of the witnesses who gave evidence to the Inquiry suggested that The Sun's support

for the Conservatives had in fact been decisive, although many, especially in other parties, thought that it was very influential. Alastair Campbell put it this way:8

"I am not sure if it can be claimed, as the Sun did after the Tories won in 1992, that "it was the Sun wot won it," but there is no doubt in my mind that the systematic undermining of Labour and its leader and policies through these papers, actively encouraged and fed with lines of attack by Tory HQ, was a factor in Labour's inability properly to connect with the public, and ultimate defeat."

¶1.7 The Rt Hon Harriet Harman MP's analysis was similar: "The Labour Party went on to receive

extremely hostile coverage from newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch. We then lost the 1992 General Election".9 During the course of her oral evidence she made clear that she thought that there were also other factors at play: "... I'm sure there were many things which contributed to us not getting elected in 1992 over and above the bombardment that we'd received from the Murdoch press ..."10

¶1.8 Mr Straw observed: "Few of us who took part, for example, in the 1992 General Election are in

any doubt that the Sun's approach lost us seats. That was their purpose, and it is disingenuous for any now to deny this".11 Even more succinctly: "It did contribute to our defeat. I took that as power".12

¶1.9 Sir John Major, whilst critical of the treatment of Lord Kinnock, did not think that it was actually so influential:13

"How much did that affect the election? Labour Party mythology has it that it made a huge difference. I don't actually think so. I think the news coverage in 1992 and 1997 accelerated a trend that existed. I do not think it changed the result of either of those General Elections. I think we would have won in 1992; we would have lost in 1997."

¶1.10 Whether or not press coverage affected the outcome of the election, it is clear that the I experience had an impact on the perceptions of politicians as to the importance of political

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press coverage; and those perceptions have subsequently been a key factor in the media strategies of political parties. The Rt Hon Tony Blair put it this way:14

"Q. I return to the issue of spin. I think we agreed that it was borne out of the unfair treatment, in your eyes, of Mr Kinnock's Labour Party, which required a disciplined and possibly a ruthless handling of the press. Is that right? "A. Yeah, but you see I draw a very clear distinction between what I would say is a very tough professional media operation and ruthless handling of the press in the sense of – when I read this stuff about how people felt bullied and harassed and intimidated and so on ..."

¶1.11 Mr Campbell recounted an active choice to change the Labour Party's approach to what

he described as the Murdoch papers.15 He described Rupert Murdoch as the single most important media figure and said that "it would have been foolish on our part not to have sought to build some sort of relationship with him."16

¶1.12 Mr Straw said:17

"...once Mr Blair had come into office in 1994, we all shared the same view, that if humanly possible, without completely compromising ourselves, we should do our best to get the papers on side. It was better than the alternative. This was because I'd been through 18 years of opposition."

¶1.13 Ms Harman, questioned at the Inquiry, offered this perspective:18

"Q. May I sort of turn that around and say, well, those manifesto commitments which we saw in 1992 were singularly absent in 1997, and there was a reason for their being absent, which was not to estrange or inflame or otherwise discourage the Murdoch press. Is there force in that observation? "A. Well, I think it goes back to what Tony Blair said in what became known as his 2007 "feral beast" speech, is that we, after all those years in opposition and believing that we wanted to get into government to do things on the health service and on unemployment and on whole range of things, that it felt necessary to do more assuaging, neutralising, courting, that was the decision that was taken, and that did feel like it was necessary."

¶1.14 Mr Blair put it slightly differently:19

¶"Between 1994-1997, we did change Labour's policy on media ownership. However I it should be remembered that this policy was itself partly a product of the terrible

relations between the Labour Party and the Murdoch press and the unions and that press. My view was and remains that there should be no presumption in favour of any media organisation or against it; that foreign ownership should not be regarded

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differently from ownership by British nationals; and that the best way of dealing with undue interference through size whether within one medium or across media, is through competition policy. So it would be fair to say that had we kept that policy, it would have been a problem with the Murdoch press. But there were sound objective reasons for changing it. I can't recall any conversations on it with anyone from the Murdoch media."

¶1.15 Mr Blair rejected the suggestion, made by Lance Price, who worked first as Mr Campbell's

deputy from 1998, and then as New Labour's Director of Communications between 2000 and 2001, that the old media policy was quietly dropped within six months of his (Mr Blair's) trip to Hayman Island in 1995, where he met Mr Murdoch, although he readily accepted that had he maintained the old policy then: "it would definitely have been a problem with the Murdoch media group in particular ...".20

¶1.16 He made very clear that he had not wanted media policy to distract him from his agenda of wider political reform:21

"...I mean, I'd taken the view I was not going to have the Labour Party coming back into power after 18 years with a programme of change for the country and having the centrepiece of the programme being issues to do with media ownership. I thought that would have been a distraction and wrong".

¶1.17 The scale of the distraction which Mr Blair believed would have resulted had he made media reform a central plank of his agenda was forcefully put:22

"My view, rightly or wrongly, was that if, in those circumstances, I had said, "Right, I've decided what I'm going to do is take on the media and change the law in relation to the media", my view is – and I think it's still my view, actually – that you would have had to clear the decks. This would have been an absolute confrontation. You would have had virtually every part of the media against you in doing it, and I felt the price you would pay for that would actually push out a lot of the things I cared about, and although, you know – I think I say towards the end of my statement: although I think this is an immensely important question , I mean, I don't, in the end – not for me at any rate, as the Prime Minister, was it more important than the health service or schools or law and order. "...If you take this on, do not think for a single moment you are not in a long, protracted battle that will shove everything else to one side whilst it's going on".

¶1.18 Speaking directly about the lessons and experience of 1992, Mr Blair said: "...I went through

that 1992 election. I remember it. It was etched on my memory, and yes, I was absolutely I determined that we should not be subject to the same onslaught".23

¶1.19 Andrew Grice gave a similar sense of the impact which tabloid treatment of Lord Kinnock had and the Labour Party's strong wish to avoid it happening again:24

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¶PART I | The Press and Politicians

"The Labour party was haunted by the treatment Neil Kinnock received as Labour leader and they were absolutely determined not to go through that again. They wanted a fair hearing. If they couldn't get the endorsement they wanted a more level playing field; as you know, in the end they got the endorsement".

¶1.20 Adam Boulton noted not only the Labour Party's close attention to the media after 1992 but

also that the Conservatives later adopted a similar closeness to the press. Asked whether he agreed with the words of Mr Blair: "...We paid inordinate attention in the early days of New Labour in courting, assuaging and persuading the media..." he said:25

"Yes, I would. As I also say, there was a reason for it, as has been cited elsewhere in the Inquiry. The soreness which Labour felt about the 1992 treatment of Neil Kinnock and the feeling that they needed to turn the media around if they were going to have a chance of getting their message across in 1997, but it struck me reading that again how remarkably close that is to some of the remarks that the current Prime Minister made last summer".

¶1.21 There was open hostility between sections of the press and the Labour Party during the

1980s, most acutely in the Labour Party's refusal to deal with NI as a result of the Wapping dispute. It was to a degree personal. Sections of the press used the power of personal attack and deployed both a sustained campaign of negative and aggressive personal coverage over a long period as well as a more concentrated burst during the 1992 General Election.

¶1.22 Labour's 1992 election manifesto contained policies which reflected (on Mr Blair's own

analysis) the poor relationship between Labour and sections of the press, especially NI. The pledge to implement Sir David Calcutt's proposals if self-regulation failed put the party at odds with much of the press, and the promise to call for an urgent inquiry by the MMC into media ownership were, however principled, consciously oppositional.

¶1.23 It is worth repeating the real difficulty in determining precisely what impact the negative

coverage of Labour politicians had on the outcome of the 1992 election. People do not necessarily agree with the opinions which they read in their newspapers, or they may already be of the same view and need no persuasion. However, it would be idle to suppose that sustained negative coverage had no effect. It is reasonable to conclude that political coverage can influence voting, although it is important not to overstate the degree to which it can or does do so.

¶1.24 Perhaps of even greater importance, and certainly easier to discern, is the impact of the 1992

election on perceptions about the power of the press to influence the fortunes of political parties. A belief that improved relations with the press were vital to future election prospects

¶I is agreed to have been a cornerstone of New Labour's approach, a lesson learned from Lord

¶Kinnock's treatment by sections of the press.

¶1.25 The impact of personally hostile media coverage is not exclusively a Labour Party issue.

Conservative politicians also bear in mind the fate of Sir John Major's Government which, in time, came to attract coverage every bit as negative and personal as that which Lord Kinnock had endured.

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The 1997 general election 2.1 On 21 July 1994, Mr Blair was elected as Leader of the Labour Party, heralding a new era in the relationship between the Labour Party and the media.26 Mr Blair himself told the Inquiry:27

"... by the time I took over the leadership of the Labour Party, we'd lost four elections in a row, We'd actually never won two consecutive full elections in our history ... I went through that 1992 election. I remember it. It was etched on my memory and ... I was absolutely determined that we should not be subject to the same onslaught ... We paid inordinate attention in the early days of New Labour to courting, assuaging and persuading the media".

¶2.2 He described this new era as one of "courting, assuaging and persuading the media".28 Mr

Blair confirmed that he met Rupert Murdoch on at least one occasion before becoming leader; this was on 15 September 1994 at a private dinner at a restaurant.29 Although Mr Murdoch could not recall the dinner, he accepted in evidence that much of what was attributed to him by a number of sources sounded plausible.30 From this it may be possible to infer that Mr Blair took the opportunity to explain that the Labour Party would not undertake an inquiry into cross-media ownership, and also the state of policy on the statutory recognition of Trade Unions.31

¶2.3 The new strategy appears to have had almost immediate effect. Within just a few days of

his election as Labour Party Leader, it was being reported that Rupert Murdoch had stated publicly that he 'could imagine' backing Blair32 (Mr Murdoch's evidence was that although he did not remember saying this, it was quite possible that he had).33

¶2.4 On 27 July 1994,34 Mr Blair appointed Mr Campbell (then assistant editor at Today, a NI

newspaper)35 as part of his political and election strategy team. Mr Campbell played a prominent role in repositioning the relationship of the Labour Party with the press.36 He became in due course the Prime Minister's Chief Press Secretary in May 1997 and on 15 July 2000 was appointed Director of Communications and Strategy at No 10.

¶2.5 Mr Campbell himself stated in evidence that, as soon as he was appointed in 1994, he set himself the objective of ensuring that Mr Blair did not suffer the same fate as Lord Kinnock.

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That this meant taking a more strategic and proactive approach to communication and relationships with the media.37 He said this about it:38

"In addition to the historic bias against Labour, the Wapping dispute had given rise to real bitterness between parts of the media and the Labour Party, to the extent that the Party did not communicate with, for example, some of the Murdoch titles. Also other titles like the Mail and the Express were so supportive of the Tories, and hostile to Labour, that our people tended to avoid them. We changed that approach very deliberately. Part of our message was that there was no part of public opinion we were afraid of and where we would not take the basic arguments of Labour".

¶2.6 Mr Blair appointed Lord Mandelson (then MP for Hartlepool) to manage the Labour Party's general election campaign. Lord Mandelson described his role as follows:39

"Now, part of that was to reassure the media that we weren't the same Labour Party, and that, in a sense, trying to persuade them that we were no longer the toxic brand of the 1980s you could describe as an attempt to sort of neutralise, to sort of take the roughest edges off their hostility to us".

¶2.7 On 17 July 1995, Mr Blair accepted the invitation of Mr Murdoch and News Corp to attend

their conference at Hayman Island and to deliver a speech. In evidence to the Inquiry, Mr Blair said:40

"... I would strongly defend that decision. It is important to understand that the Murdoch press (a) represented a large part of the media with large numbers of readers i.e. voters and (b) had been viscerally hostile to the Labour Party. The fact is I was changing the Labour Party to become New Labour ... The continued hostilities between the Murdoch Group and Labour had no rationale to it given our changes and the fact that the Conservative Government was running out of steam. Actually, my speech held closely to all the policies I believed in".

¶2.8 He added:41

"I had a minimum and maximum objective. The minimum objective was to stop them tearing us to pieces and the maximum objective was, if possible, to open the way to support. Now, actually, the speech I gave – yes, of course you had to balance it very carefully. There's no policy I changed, and actually in the speech I went out of my way – and we were very careful about this – to make sure I emphasised support for minimum wage, union recognition, pro-European position, increases in public investment, all of which may not have been what they wanted to hear. On the other

¶I hand, what I felt perfectly comfortable in doing was saying – and this I was perfectly

comfortable with saying – "This Labour Party is going to be a party of aspiration, not merely redistribution. It's going to be a party that's going to appeal to the emerging aspirant working class. It's going to be a party that is essentially about creating a meritocratic society and expanding opportunity and it's not going to go back to the old ways". But that was a message I was determined to give to the country.

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... But what is important, I think, to emphasise ... I actually did have in all the things that we were committed to they wouldn't like. I was also – because I was having to watch my other audience as well".

¶2.9 Mr Murdoch put it this way:42

"I distinctly recall Mr Blair's address at our conference on Hayman Island. He spoke convincingly of the ability of a new Labour Party to energise Britain. I do recall believing that Mr Blair and the policies he advocated could help revitalise Britain, and sharing that view with newspaper editors at the conference, who were also impressed by Mr Blair's speech".

¶2.10 He also confirmed that he may well have said the following when thanking Mr Blair for his speech:43

"If our flirtation is ever consummated, Tony, then I suspect we will end up making love like porcupines, very, very carefully".

¶2.11 The different perceptions and perspectives on the dynamics of this interaction interested

the Inquiry. Mr Murdoch was keen to impress on the Inquiry a view that all the power and influence lay with politicians, but Mr Blair's evidence and autobiography were very different.44 He spoke of feeling 'this pretty intense power' in the relationship (although Mr Murdoch was not mentioned by name in this context).45

¶2.12 This contrast was particularly striking. Mr Murdoch:46

"As for the 'value' to me of these meetings, my view is that if an editor or publisher is invited or otherwise has an opportunity to meet with a head of government or political leader, you go..."

¶Mr Blair:47

"Again, now, it seems obvious: the country's most powerful newspaper proprietor, whose publications have hitherto been rancorous in their opposition to the Labour Party, invites us into the lion's den. You go, don't you?"

¶2.13 Shortly after the Hayman Island speech, on 17 and 21 July 1995, editorials were published in

The Sun which were broadly supportive; Mr Blair, it was said, "has vision, he has purpose and he speaks our language on morality and family life".48 But Mr Murdoch's evidence recalled I

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that the editorials also noted that a number of questions about Mr Blair's policies remained unanswered at that stage.

¶2.14 Shortly before the 1997 election, Mr Blair wrote two articles in The Sun about the Labour

Party's commitment to a referendum on the Euro: "I'm a British Patriot" on 17 March 1997 and "My Love for the Pound" on 17 April 1997. Mr Campbell recalled that it had been made clear to him by the editor of The Sun that, if Mr Blair were to emphasise the point in these articles that there would be no entry into the Euro without a specific referendum on the issue, and that he understood people's fears about a so-called European super-state, this was likely to be the final piece of the jigsaw before Mr Murdoch agreed that the paper would back the Labour Party at the election.49

¶2.15 Mr Campbell and Mr Blair both emphasised to the Inquiry that they did not tailor their

policies to seek favour from the proprietor of The Sun. Instead, they sought to highlight those parts of Labour Party policies which might appeal to Sun readers.50 Mr Campbell noted, as an example, that holding a referendum on the Euro was already official policy long before The Sun made the request it did.51 In other words, there was alignment. There were also 'concessions in rhetoric'.52

¶2.16 The landslide victory of New Labour in 1997, and the decisive defeat of Sir John Major, have

been widely analysed. Policies, personalities and the public mood on the one hand, and the press on the other, were all in the same place. The press no doubt both reflected and affected public opinion, in immeasurable proportions. Mr Murdoch generally backed the winning side (although he also stated that he sought to judge the candidates on the issues, not on whether they were likely to win).53 Mr Campbell put it this way:54

"Again, I do not believe that the papers swung the result, though they may have helped increase the majority because of the sense of momentum we were able to gather. I believe the Sun backed us because they knew we were going to win: we did not win because they backed us. But it is certainly the case that we very deliberately set out to get our voice and our arguments heard in papers normally hostile to us, and that this had the positive political impact we sought."

¶2.17 Mr Blair was asked to comment on a passage from Chris Mullin's diaries dealing with the dinner between him and Mr Murdoch on 15 September 1994:55

Q. "If he thinks we're going to win, he'll go easy on us, but if he thought we could lose, he would turn on us." He [Mr Blair] added: "If the press misbehave badly during

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the election campaign, I will stop everything for two days and we'll have a debate about what they're up to, who owns them, the lot." Then Mr Mullin: "Did you say that to Murdoch?" And your answer: "Not in so many words." Is that an accurate gist then of your conversation with Mr Mullin? A. I think it is. I mean, as I say, this is going back 18 years or 17½ years now, but certainly that was my attitude. I think now, by the way, I would have a slightly different view. In other words, I think – there was a view of Rupert Murdoch, which I think Paul Keating speaks to the same effect, which is that he just backs the winner. My view now is it's not as simple as that actually. There are very strong political views and those actually do come first, I think, or put it like this: they're equal first, let's say, with whatever interests he feels in being on the winning side or the losing side, and – you know, so I'm not – my view of this now is if he'd been persuaded – I mean, it looked as if we were going to win, so you didn't have to be a genius to think we had a good chance of winning, although when you've lost four a row, by the way, you never think it's that clear. So I'm not sure I would have the same view now about that, but that may well have been what I said to Chris and to – and yes, look, if I'd ended up in a situation where they turned on me, I would have had to fight back. You know, there's no – that would have been the only recourse. And we weren't – in 1992, we weren't really in a position where we were able to fight back, but this time we would have".