Scotland’s Referendum – Was Rupert Murdoch a target?

Now, I do like a good conspiracy theory.  Perhaps the moon landing was not filmed at Area 51 in Nevada,  perhaps the Mafia did not assassinate JFK, perhaps Prince Phillip did not arrange the demise of Princess Di.  Perhaps Rupert Murdoch was not a target in Scotland’s referendum.  Maybe none of these are true?  Crikey! did I say that out loud?

Call me cynical, but you should consider this? Who is the real King Maker in British politics?   I would argue it was Rupert Murdoch.

Clearly, he was instrumental in bringing Thatcher to power in 1979.  For that he was well rewarded, and that’s politics.  I am not judging that.

In 1997 he was instrumental in the success of New Labour and bringing Tony Blair to power.    Tony Blair is the godfather to Grace, Rupert Murdoch’s second youngest daughter.  Clearly they had a relationship both on and off the field.  Blair was questioned by Leveson regarding his ‘close’ relationship with Rupert Murdoch.

We know that Rupert Murdoch dropped Gordon Brown, the successor to Tony Blair, and sided with David Cameron in 2010, helping to bring him to power.  Indeed Rupert Murdoch was one of the first at Cameron’s ‘back door’ in 2010.

In June 2012, Brown hit back at Rupert Murdoch – clearly there was no love lost between them. Of course, Gordon Brown has now thrown his hand in with the Better Together camp?

In Feb 2012 Rupert Murdoch declared his support for Alex Salmond and Scottish Independence.  In April 2012, Rupert Murdoch is in front of the Leveson Inquiry!

Suddenly, this was a game changer.  Westminster and the 3 main parties could see the goose, that is the golden goose, being cooked.  One thing was for sure.  If Murdoch could put Thatcher, Blair and Cameron in power then why could he not do the same with Alex Salmond.  This could be one of the greatest dilemmas in post war British politics.

Perhaps, the only way to ‘neutralise’ the impact of Murdoch was to discredit him and his organisation.  Shortly after declaring his support for Alex Salmond and Scottish Independence Murdoch finds him finds himself in front of a Public Inquiry.    The rich and powerful have an uncanny knack of self preservation.  However, on this occasion it seemed important to drag the very elderly tycoon and those closest to him into the public arena, savage him and try to destroy his reputation and credibility and that of his organisation.

It is worth looking at the background to the Better Together campaign and considering whether there are ‘dark forces’ in their camp.  And, of course, the lengths they may go to in pursuit of their agenda on Scotland’s referendum.

Sure, the Murdoch Empire did some very wrong things.  The media were very badly behaved long before Murdoch and will continue long after him.  The ‘crime’, if you will, was phone hacking.  I did a letter to the Metro around that time to shine some light on this issue of ‘hacking’. The term ‘hacker’ has certain connotations and stems from the practice of breaking through the security of computers, especially only line.  To achieve this, there are a number of approaches that require special skills, knowledge and determination.  These attributes are usually highly desirable – but not in the case of hacking.  Leveson, was concerned with hacking into telephony.  Was this the same? Did this require special skills, knowledge and determination?  The answer is probably no.  This was most certainly not the case.  I would have put the blame firmly with the mobile phone service providers – and I am sure this must have been widely known. When mobile phones first exploded onto the market we were all witness to people setting up their ring tones etc annoyingly in public.  Some people even went to the extent of setting up their voicemail message.  How many people were savvy enough to change their voicemail default password to secure their messages?  Originally, mobile service providers set the default pass at e.g.  ‘3333’.  If you called someone’s mobile and they did not answer and it reverted to their voicemail message; while this was playing you hit * then 3333 and ‘shazam’, you are in their voicemail listening to, and managing, their messages.  All you needed was a note of someone’s mobile number and chances were, that they had not reset their default pass.  As a senior telecoms expert I warned my staff to update their default voicemail pass.  However, a huge number of mobile users were unaware of this security weakness and the fact that this was a forgotten about default.  For that, the mobile service providers should have been hauled over the coals.  But they were not.  Why was that?  Were they not the main target?

The most damning criticism of the Murdoch empire was the Milly Dowler case where her voicemail messages had been deleted; suggesting she could still be alive and managing her voicemail.  The implication was that someone from News International was in her voicemail deleting messages.  This, more than any other event, brought the house down around Rupert Murdoch and caused the closure of the News of the World.

Later, the mobile service provider confirmed that the voice mail messages had, most probably, been timed out and deleted automatically!

By that time the damage was already done.  Rupert Murdoch and his empire were totally discredited.  Perhaps the ‘powers that be’ now felt that the power of Murdoch to influence the Scottish Referendum had been nullified.  Perhaps?  But don’t bet on it?

So, here’s the thing.  If, in 2012, Rupert Murdoch had announced that he was opposed to Alex Salmond and that Scotland should remain within the Union we would probably have read about the SNP Party Conference on Sunday – in the NEWS of the WORLD!