Hold on to your seats, everyone, and grab yourselves a stiff drink. I’ve got a story gleaned from this week’s Dispatches: How Murdoch Ran Britain (Channel 4, Monday) so shocking that it will completely change your views on government, the media, everything.
OK, here goes: in 2004 Tony Blair wanted Britain to sign up to an EU constitution. When Rupert Murdoch discovered this, he personally intervened by running a Sun front-page story headlined ‘TRAITOR’. The effect was almost instant. Within days, Tony Blair had offered the people of Britain a referendum on the EU.
Yep, sorry about that. What you were doing was waiting for the exciting revelation. And what I was doing was taking the piss out of presenter Peter Oborne. I don’t care if he writes for this magazine, occasionally; I wouldn’t care if he was editor: if a topical news documentary is going to drag me from my precious University Challenge viewing slot, it needs to be a good deal better than the stale tripe served up by Oborne on Monday.
You could tell how desperate he was by the quality of the rent-a-quotes he employed: Lance Price; John Prescott; Geoffrey Robertson QC.
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