Wires, Chains and Strings

An ex-minister in Gordon Brown's government has told the Observer that Rupert Murdoch ordered Brown to help defuse the political row over investigations into illegal spying by Murdoch's minions in the scumbag press. "What I know is that Murdoch got in touch with a good friend who then got in touch with Brown," the minister said, speaking anonymously as befits one with the moral courage of a New New Labour apparatchik. There have also been suggestions that Murdoch enlisted Tony Blair in "a chain of phone calls that led to Brown", since presumably the Reverend and his Glorious Successor were not speaking to one another at the time. A spokesbeing for Tony issued a categorical denial, and we all know what it means when Tony says something categorically.

Meanwhile, a spokesbeing for the Secretary for Cultchah, Murdoch and Sport has said that Jeremy C Hunt's decision to present his chum with the rest of Britain's infotainment media would not be influenced by any past, present or future skulduggery from Murdoch's editors. "The culture secretary has to make a quasi-judicial decision about the impact of the proposed merger on media plurality issues alone," the spokesbeing said. Doubtless the Times articles proclaiming Jeremy C Hunt as the next real Conservative prime minister are being composed even as we chuckle.