© Getty Images
London - The judicial inquiry into Britain's phone hacking scandal was set to hear testimony on Monday from Tony Blair, a former prime minister who sought the endorsement of Rupert Murdoch's newspapers but once described the press as "feral."
Mr. Blair's appearance may, paradoxically, offer welcome relief for Prime Minister David Cameron, switching attention from the close relationship between Mr. Murdoch and the current government to the tycoon's ties to its Labour Party predecessor.
For much of last week, the judicial inquiry headed by Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson sought to probe what seemed a cozy relationship between the Murdoch empire and the office of Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt at a time when Mr. Murdoch's News Corporation was seeking to acquire full ownership of BSkyB, Britain's biggest satellite broadcaster.
Mr. Hunt, who was the minister overseeing the bid, has been depicted as favorable to the takeover at a time when his role required impartiality. He is to testify before the Leveson inquiry on Thursday.
The $12 billion bid was abandoned last year as the phone hacking scandal broke over parts of the Murdoch media outpost in Britain.
In Mr. Blair's case, the ties date to 1990s when Mr. Murdoch's top-selling tabloid,
The Sun, swung its support behind Mr. Blair's Labour Party before the 1997 general election and later took credit for the Labour victory. Two years before the election, Mr. Blair, then leader of the opposition, flew to an Australian island to address News Corporation executives as the Labour Party sought to reverse a hostile relationship with the press.
One of Mr. Blair's former close aides and allies, Lord Peter Mandelson, told the Leveson inquiry last week that it was "arguably the case" that the relationship between Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Blair and his successor, Gordon Brown "became closer than was wise."The bonds endured: Mr. Blair was reported in the British media to have acted as godfather to one of Mr. Murdoch's 's children in 2010.
While his government took power on a huge wave of popularity, Mr. Blair's close alliance with former President Bush in the Iraq war and accusations that he had misled Britons about the conflict contributed to a gradual souring of his relationship with newspapers.
Shortly before he left office in 2007, he told an audience: "The fear of missing out means today's media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no one dares miss out."
He also quoted a past prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, who berated the news media for having "power without responsibility - the prerogative of the harlot through the ages," a charge that borrowed from Kipling.
Shortly before the 2010 general election, in which Mr. Cameron came to power as head of a coalition government with the junior Liberal Democrats,
The Sun abandoned Labour to swing behind Mr. Cameron's Conservatives.
Reader Comments
to our Newsletter