Rupert Murdoch indicates he may turn away from Tony Blair's Labour:
"Rupert Murdoch, the head of News International, urged David Cameron last night to commit the Conservative Party to a Thatcherite tax-cutting agenda to win the next election.
"The proprietor of The Sun and The Times, whose influence is credited with helping Tony Blair and New Labour win power, hinted that he would be prepared to switch support to Mr Cameron's style of Conservatism if he adopted tax cuts."
Why did Murdoch first support Blair?
"We swung behind Labour and they didn't turn away from the Thatcher legacy. Tony Blair is on record saying he would not undo what she had done, and he has not.''
The "Thatcher legacy" - so warmly embraced by individuals like Murdoch - was exposed by John Pilger in 2003:
"Most Labour voters had endured 18 years of cuts in education, social security, disability and other benefits - yet [Gordon] Brown reversed not a single one of them, including a tax base that allows the likes of Rupert Murdoch to avoid paying tens of millions of pounds to the Treasury. Today, nothing essentially has changed. One in four Britons is still born into poverty - a poverty that has hardened under Blair and Brown and remains the chief cause of higher rates of ill health, accidents and deaths in infancy, school exclusion and low educational performance."
The Murdoch press is solidly behind the conservative Liberal party in Australia. but if the empire smells a change in the wind, their ten years of "principled" support of John Howard will vanish. Behind the populist veil, the Murdoch press is interested in being close to power and maintaining superior political access and financial largesse.
"Rupert Murdoch, the head of News International, urged David Cameron last night to commit the Conservative Party to a Thatcherite tax-cutting agenda to win the next election.
"The proprietor of The Sun and The Times, whose influence is credited with helping Tony Blair and New Labour win power, hinted that he would be prepared to switch support to Mr Cameron's style of Conservatism if he adopted tax cuts."
Why did Murdoch first support Blair?
"We swung behind Labour and they didn't turn away from the Thatcher legacy. Tony Blair is on record saying he would not undo what she had done, and he has not.''
The "Thatcher legacy" - so warmly embraced by individuals like Murdoch - was exposed by John Pilger in 2003:
"Most Labour voters had endured 18 years of cuts in education, social security, disability and other benefits - yet [Gordon] Brown reversed not a single one of them, including a tax base that allows the likes of Rupert Murdoch to avoid paying tens of millions of pounds to the Treasury. Today, nothing essentially has changed. One in four Britons is still born into poverty - a poverty that has hardened under Blair and Brown and remains the chief cause of higher rates of ill health, accidents and deaths in infancy, school exclusion and low educational performance."
The Murdoch press is solidly behind the conservative Liberal party in Australia. but if the empire smells a change in the wind, their ten years of "principled" support of John Howard will vanish. Behind the populist veil, the Murdoch press is interested in being close to power and maintaining superior political access and financial largesse.
2 Comments:
An important function of maintaining the status quo in our capitalist democracies is turning the tables around from time to time. If you can get both sides of politics into power on roughly the same platforms (ie at least as relates to the big issues anyway, like the economy, foreign policy, etc. The odd pro-gay marriage government doesn't seriously challenge this, which is not to say such developments aren't significant) it effectively neutralises the political process as a way of facilitating meaningful social change. When Kim Beazley returned to the Opposition Leader's chair, one of the first things he did was announce the Opposition's support for tax cuts for the richest Australians. In effect, he was telling the powerful, who support John Howard at present, that Labor was serious about getting back into office. Note also the never-ending love affair between Federal Labor and Liberal Governments and Kerry Packer.
Whenever people ponder Labor's chances of getting re-elected, they ought to remember that the real question is whether any party will achieve incumbency on a platform that fundamentally shifts economic and political clout away from the corporations and other privileged sectors (doctors, other high income earners, etc). If we maintain 'observer status' as our democracy continues to drift away, there is no reason to suspect that this formula will change.
No, you're right Melanie. One of those parties has three vowels in its name, the other only has two. Well spotted.
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