Does Rupert Murdoch still matter? The question UK politicians don’t want to test

The UK general election next year is set to be a control test for one of the big questions that troubles political leaders and analysts — does Rupert still matter? 

Or, to put it in the Estuary-speak preferred by News Corp’s British media: will it be The Sun wot wins it?

Right now across Britain media reporters are head down, peering into the dregs of their workplace cuppa, trying to read the tea leaves to work out just what, if anything, Rupert is up to. Will he be backing dishy-Rishi Sunak from the Tories or (gasp) could it be Labour’s Keir “Sir Softie” Starmer? 

Neither of the leaders is leaving it to chance. 

Within months of becoming PM, Sunak sat down for a pre-Christmas catch-up dinner with Rupert and his senior managers, according to transparency reports the UK government is required to release. 

The transparency reports were expanded in the wake of the hacking scandal which, among many other shady practices, revealed the depths of the connections between the Murdochs and the Conservative Party, including the eyebrow-raising report that Rupert was often smuggled through the back door of 10 Downing Street to avoid media outside. 

In Australia, any knowledge about prime ministerial meetings with the Murdochs depends on third-party sleuthing, with access to Anthony Albanese’s diary caught up in contested freedom-of-information requests, prompting press gallery elder Michelle Grattan to ask last week: “Why should we have leaders’ diaries? Among other reasons, because they show who has access to a government’s top decision-maker.”

Last December’s Murdoch-Sunak gabfest wasn’t the first meeting between the two rich-listers. As Boris Johnson’s chancellor of the exchequer, Sunak met regularly with Murdoch, part of the Johnson cabinet’s intense outreach to media oligarchs.

The Murdochs’ UK media — like the other conservative mastheads the Daily Mail and The Telegraph —  is heavily invested in the British remake of Australia’s 2013 federal election campaign: stop the boats, axe the tax, tough on crime. In the UK case, the “boats” are those small vessels ferrying so-called “irregular migration” across the channel into a post-Brexit Britain.  

The “tax” is the clean air levies (known Ultra-Low Emission Zones or “ULEZ”) being imposed on high-emission vehicles in most British cities. Although initiated by Johnson when he was mayor of London, “thoughtful Sunak” should, Sun columnist Tony Parsons said this week, “take on the eco-mob”. 

It’s a common man, saviour-of-the-British-motorist moment for Britain’s richest-ever prime minister, although choosing to kick off the campaign while sitting in Margaret Thatcher’s old Rover seemed like targeting a fairly boutique voting market.

It’s the old tabloid favourite, crime, that’s bringing the political and media wings of the Conservative Party together with Starmer in their sights. Once a human rights lawyer, Starmer became director of public prosecutions from 2008 to 2013. For a wannabe Labour prime minister, it’s the reverse Goldilocks position, attracting criticism from both the right (too soft) and the left (too hard). 

But what made the position just right for an ambitious man was the access it gave to Britain’s often rabid anti-crime media. According to the investigative journalism website Declassified UK, Starmer took the opportunity to build bridges with the Murdoch media, turning up to Murdoch’s traditional summer party in 2009 and lunching with his editors, including Rebekah Brooks. 

Then, in 2011, the hacking scandal erupted. Starmer broke off relations as his office oversaw the prosecution of the journalists and editors involved, including Brooks, although she was later found not guilty. Now, she’s back in the chair as head of the Murdochs’ UK operations and is rumoured to be in line to become News Corp’s CEO when Robert Thomson steps down.

But with the chutzpah needed to be prime minister (or a media mogul for that matter), suddenly Rupert and Starmer are back tête-à-têteing over champagne at the 92-year-old’s summer party this year, while Labour has been privileging the mogul’s media with pre-release policy drops. 

Does it matter? Back when The Sun claimed credit for the Tories’ 1992 election win, it was the largest paper in the UK, with an audited circulation of about 3.5 million. When it pivoted to Tony Blair’s New Labour five years later, its circulation was near 4 million. The company stopped publicly reporting its figures in 2020, but it’s now thought to be about a fifth of what it was then, lagging behind its tabloid competitors like the Daily Mail and (free) Evening Standard. 

Like most tabloids, it’s been unable to pivot to a digital subscription model, and although The Sun claims to have “reached 159 million global monthly unique users in June 2023”, its digital content suggests this audience is focussing on celebrity gossip and English football. 

Odds are The Sun is unlikely to make much of a difference. But neither Sunak nor Starmer seems inclined to risk taking that bet.