Mr Howard will not impress the voters by sucking up to Mr Murdoch (and Mr Bush)

In July 1995 Tony Blair famously travelled to Australia to grovel at the court of Rupert Murdoch, whose newspapers in Britain subsequently offered him their support. Last week Michael Howard travelled to Cancun in Mexico with a similar purpose, though the Tory party could only afford to send him club class while Murdoch bigwigs went first. Mr Howard had lunch with Mr Murdoch last autumn, and an invitation to address News Corp senior executives followed. Naturally all this has given rise to a great deal of optimistic speculation in the Howard camp.

But it would be premature to think that Mr Murdoch is about to dump Tony Blair in the same way that he dropped John Major. Eleven months before Mr Blair made his 22-hour journey to Australia, the great proprietor had already signalled his changing mood. ‘I could even imagine supporting the Labour leader, Tony Blair,’ Mr Murdoch told an interviewer in August 1994.