An Amusing Twist to the Murdoch Affair in Britain

All week, Britain has been buzzing with the Murdoch affair.

The reason is this: Rupert Murdoch and his son James appeared this week in front of a judicial inquiry in London into the UK’s phone-hacking scandal that caused Rupert Murdoch to shut down his largest-selling newspaper in Britain, the News of the World, last year.

But this week, the questions thrown at the Murdochs were more than just about phone-hacking. They were also about how close the relationship was between the Murdochs and the government.

That’s important because the Murdochs have been bidding to buy (in full) the very lucrative pay-per-view TV channel here, BSKYB.

The rules were clear: the government minister in charge of adjudicating on this bid (media secretary Jeremy Hunt) was obliged to operate in what was called a “quasi-judicial” manner. That meant he had to be entirely independent and not show any favoritism to those either in favor or against the bid.

However, emails and texts revealed by the judicial (Leveson) inquiry, which had come from the Murdoch News Corp, raised a lot of questions about whether the minister had been strictly impartial.

To some, particularly the opposition Labour party, the News Corp emails clearly showed the minister had not acted independently, and had instead been guilty of favoring the Murdoch bid.

The Labour party (and a cast of others) have this week been calling for the minister to resign over the matter. Time and time again, if you read the British press this week, you will have seen “labour calls for minister’s head”.

Here’s the amusing twist.

On Thursday the minister, Jeremy Hunt, had a scheduled engagement in London attending the launch of a London 2012 (Olympics-related) arts festival. The problem was the venue: the Tower of London.

That’s the same Tower of London used by early British monarchs not just as a prison but also as a site for executing their foes (although most of the executing actually happened on the nearby Tower Hill).

The phrase “sent to the Tower” has entered the English vernacular as implying being sent to the Tower of London – you can assume for execution and probably the added indignity of having their head mounted on a spike for all to see!

And that’s perhaps why the minister, Jeremy Hunt, departed the Tower of London on Thursday after making just a short statement. He left his deputy to field questions from the awaiting press. An aide said later that it had always been planned that he would leave before the question-and-answer session, as he had to go to another meeting.

Hunt’s heart must have sunk when he realized he’d need to be attending an engagement at the Tower of London this week, considering the maelstrom that’s surrounding him and his future.

The appearance at the Tower was of course an almost perfect gag for Britain’s cheeky newspaper editors, even some of those from the Murdoch press!