How Murdoch had a hotline to the PM in the run-up to Iraq war<\/a><\/span><\/p>\nBy Andrew Grice, Political Editor
Published: 19 July 2007<\/p>\n
Tony Blair had three conversations with the media magnate Rupert Murdoch in the nine days before the start of the Iraq war, the Government has disclosed.<\/p>\n
Details of the former prime minister’s contacts with Mr Murdoch have been released under the Freedom of Information Act. After trying to block disclosure for four years, the Government backed down in a surprise change of heart the day after Mr Blair resigned last month<\/span><\/span>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nSounds like Gordon Brown threw his dear friend Tony under the Bloody bus.<\/p>\n
……<\/p>\n
In Alastair Campbell’s diaries, published last week, the former spin doctor described a Downing Street dinner for Mr Murdoch and his sons, James and Lachlan, in 2002. “Murdoch pointed out that his were the only papers that gave us support when the going got tough. ‘I’ve noticed,’ said TB,” Mr Campbell wrote. Lance Price, Mr Campbell’s deputy, called Mr Murdoch “the 24th member of the [Blair] Cabinet<\/span><\/span>“. He added: “His presence was always felt. No big decision could ever be made inside No10 without taking account of the likely reaction of three men, Gordon Brown, John Prescott and Rupert Murdoch. On all the really big decisions, anybody else could safely be ignored.”<\/p>\n….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Well, there’s always hoping that he’ll share a cell with Bush and Rumsfeld.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This defines Rev. Smiler, and history will be most unkind to him. How Murdoch had a hotline to the PM in the run-up to Iraq war By Andrew Grice, Political EditorPublished: 19 July 2007 Tony Blair had three conversations with the media magnate Rupert Murdoch in the nine days before the start of the Iraq …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,969,1063,1064,978,1273],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-evil","category-iraq","category-media","category-politics","category-tony-blair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199522"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}