[A-List] UK/US news media: Rupert Murdoch

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Some interesting comments from Michael Portillo at the bottom of this
article.


Murdoch backs 'courageous' Blair and 'moral' Bush
By Nigel Morris Political Correspondent
The Independent
12 February 2003

Rupert Murdoch praised Tony Blair yesterday for his "extraordinarily
courageous" stand on the Middle East, and gave his full backing to US-led
strikes against Iraq.

With the Prime Minister facing insurrection within the Labour Party over the
pros-pect of war, the media magnate signalled that Mr Blair could expect the
support of his newspaper empire if military action begins. Mr Murdoch also
praised President George Bush for acting "very morally, very correctly" in
the crisis.

He told The Bulletin, an Australian magazine: "I think Tony is being
extraordinarily courageous and strong on what his stance is in the Middle
East.

"It's not easy to do that living in a party which is largely composed of
people that have a knee-jerk anti-Americanism and are sort of pacifist. But
he's shown great guts, as he did, I think, in Kosovo and over various
problems in the old Yugoslavia."

Mr Murdoch, who is the head of News Corporation, which owns The Times and
The Sun newspapers and has a stake in Sky television, added: "We can't back
down now, where you hand over the whole of the Middle East to Saddam and I
think Bush is acting very morally, very correctly, and I think he is going
to go on with it. He will either go down in history as a very great
president or he'll crash and burn; I'm optimistic it will be the former by a
ratio of two to one."

The tycoon said he was closer to Gordon Brown than Mr Blair but took a swipe
at the Chancellor's politics. "We are more against Gordon Brown than we are
against Tony Blair, and Gordon is, if anything, more of a friend. I admire
him as a person," said Mr Murdoch.

"But his insistence that only the Government can provide health services and
education and just locking out the private sector is really a huge mistake.

"No one government, one cabinet or one person can run a health service with
over one million employees. It is just impossible."

Mr Blair's problems in securing domestic political support for his strategy
over Iraq deepened last night as the Tories delivered their most scathing
attack on his handling of the crisis.

Bernard Jenkin, the shadow Defence Secretary, said the Tory party "broadly"
supported the Government's determination to disarm President Saddam. But he
said: "We're already extremely concerned about the Government's undermining
of British public opinion with such appalling and reprehensible, cack-handed
initiatives as the dodgy dossier published by No 10 last week.

"How can the Prime Minister restore his personal authority after he has been
so abjectly found out?"

But Michael Portillo, the former cabinet minister and former Tory leadership
contender praised Mr Blair for developing "a new political personality in
which he is very hard-edged, very ideological, very certain".

He said the Prime Minister tried to be "all things to all people" in his
first spell in power, but now got on with things "whether public opinion is
with him or without".

Mr Portillo added: "The course he's embarked upon is much more dangerous. I
applaud him for doing it. I point out that he's the only leader that I can
think of who is moving against his public opinion with courage."