William Shawcross

You’ll miss him when he’s gone

Ed Miliband was beaming when I saw him talking to Rupert Murdoch at the media magnate’s summer party at the Orangery, Kensington Palace, just three weeks ago.

issue 16 July 2011

Ed Miliband was beaming when I saw him talking to Rupert Murdoch at the media magnate’s summer party at the Orangery, Kensington Palace, just three weeks ago.

Ed Miliband was beaming when I saw him talking to Rupert Murdoch at the media magnate’s summer party at the Orangery, Kensington Palace, just three weeks ago. The Labour leader has since admitted that he did not raise the matter of phone hacking that evening. Of course not! He was trying to charm.

But that is so last month. Now, Miliband is happily playing Pied Piper to the lynch mob against the lord of the evil empire whom the Labour party courted so long and so successfully. Mobs should never be trusted, let alone joined. But David Cameron’s government is rushing to catch up with Ed Miliband, the BBC and the Guardian, who all hate conservatism as much as they hate Murdoch, its strongest voice.

The behaviour of some News of the World journalists and some executives in the phone-hacking scandal is deplorable — unforgivable, as Murdoch himself has said.

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