The below is an extract from Andrew Neil’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, published today. You can read the whole document here.
‘How we treat Rupert Murdoch’s media interests when in power,’ Mr Blair told me in 1996, a year before he became Prime Minister ‘will depend on how his newspapers treat the Labour party in the run up to the election.’ That is exactly how it panned out.
The Sun and the News of the World fell in line behind New Labour in the run up to the 1997 election, The Times stayed broadly neutral and the Sunday Times unenthusiastically Tory. After the election, The Times quickly fell in line as the New Labour house journal, its chief scribe in that role Tom Baldwin, now chief spin-doctor to Ed Miliband (just one example of the Downing Street/Wapping revolving door).
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