Labour v the Media - a Historic Clash in the Making

Could it be that Rupert Murdoch has finally overreached himself? This week in a long Financial Times interview he publicly threw down the gauntlet and declared that all his titles will "vote no!" in any referendum on the euro. There is a throw in judo where the sheer weight of the attacker's lunge is deftly turned against him: might Murdoch land flat on his back this time, put there by his own hubris?

But that would first require a democratically elected prime minister to turn and grapple with this media Goliath. Looking at the sheer bulk of the ogre, perhaps it is unfair for bystanders to urge Tony Blair on, yet now he will have to do it. It has become a democratic duty because the question Murdoch has posed is "Who rules here?" To use Murdoch's own words, "The central issue is one of sovereignty", spoken without apparent irony.

The mogul was, of course, referring to his reason for opposing the single currency, not to the legitimacy of his own overweening abuse of his media-market dominance - 40% of newspaper readership plus Sky and more to come. His europhobia springs not from idealism but from hatred of EU regulation, the only likely source of control on his operations.

Whether/when to go for a euro referendum is the most lethal political decision Tony Blair and Gordon Brown will ever have to make. There is no significant difference of opinion between them on the long-term merits of being in - if only we were safely there already, if only Calais's distant shores could be swum without drowning on the way. It is an "if" spoken in increasingly nervy tones from even strong europhiles in Labour ranks recently. Is it worth betting the ranch? Couldn't it be postponed until some (unspecified) better moment? Having left it so long, a government now ebbing in popularity might still expect a general election victory, but could be equally certain of getting a bloody nose if it offers punters a potshot without the risk of letting the Tories back in.

The knife-edge decision, says a prominent insider, might just be tipped by the provocation of Murdoch's arrogance. Consider the consequences of not confronting the enemy: weakness is always punished. Remember Labour's fatal failure to face down the unions back when Jim Callaghan and others balked at Barbara Castle's In Place of Strife reforms. They thought the fight "not worth the candle" then, but by not standing up to the unions they were destroyed by them.

Now, some are saying, is a similar moment of truth: time to stand up to the europhobic press and win. A backs-to-the-wall, all-out denunciation of the crazed little Englanders in a press that never did represent the voters would do nothing but good. After all, look at the newsstands every day: things could hardly get worse with the rightwing press now. But it would be a mighty frightening battle.

Historians underestimate the degree to which the strange nature of the British press has warped the course of events of the last Tory century. Beaverbrook's brute power and Northcliffe's promise to give his Daily Mail readers "a daily hate" set the tone for a politically distorted press, bent against every Labour government. They brought down Attlee, reduced Harold Wilson to extreme paranoia and kept Kinnock out. John Major names the day of his downfall from the moment Murdoch turned against him and chose to give Blair a chance. If Murdoch, Black and Rothermere win now, then the failure to hold a referendum or failure to win a yes vote will be the clearest example yet of how a tiny handful of a media barons yet again forged the course of history.

Britain's relationship with Europe from the start has been mis-shaped by them. Britain's anti-Europeanism has less to do with island geography or empire history than the misfortune that all the serious media money has come from a few eccentric rightwingers. The rest of Europe has serious, successful centre-left papers, while here the few leftwing media owners rarely had deep pockets: Clive Hollick's Express had no chance against the Mail's power to buy everything and everyone.

This political distortion is so ancient it feels like the British weather. Shrug, carry an umbrella, there is nothing to be done about it was always New Labour's calculation, so they wooed the press barons. But whatever the subtle and not-so-subtle compacts of those early days, it has all broken down now. Day after day the abuse rains down, with 75% of the press a declared enemy, the norm for Labour.

The Telegraph once separated news and comment: now its news descends to the level of its outrageous Brussels reporting. The Mirror has been effectively lost to Labour since Wilson's day, now aimlessly raucous in pursuit of noise, no longer Labour's heartland voice. Broadcasters offer some relief but however hard they try to make their own weather, in this climate they are too often dragged along by whatever the government's enemy press declares to be the news of the day. That is unavoidable unless they decide to inhabit another planet: the cacophony is too loud to be ignored when press feeding frenzies become the real Westminster news story.

Why are newspapers more shrill and histrionic than ever? The frustrated fury of the right lacks a cause: bullies hate losers so they have little taste for their own ragged party. Regretting the passing of the glory days of Mrs Thatcher, they now have only the power to destroy. "We are the opposition now!" is their reckless battle cry, kicking politicians into the mud, grotesquely inflating small errors of judgment into crimes, poisoning the political air. Who would believe we live in relatively quiet and prosperous domestic times, economically the best decade since the war, and with a reasonably well-intentioned and competent government?

To be sure, this government has its infuriating aspects: cowardice, an endless ability to disappoint, to over-promise, to waver about with a wan beacon of belief. But hardly the worst government of all time. All this is democratically dangerous. How is the public to tell villains from ordinary politicians, should some dangerous demagogue arise here as one did so suddenly in the Netherlands? What is the standard to judge politicians if it is all a wicked game?

Murdoch is not playing games. He has thrown down a dangerous challenge to elected government, pursuing his own anti-European business interests at the expense of Britain's long-term needs. Now is the time for Labour to take him on, along with the rest. It would take steely nerves, but the aggressive interference of this foreign bully in Britain's democratic process has offered Blair a chance to enter the referendum campaign not as a tired incumbent government, but as a pluckier, more admirable fighter against the massed ranks of this anti-democratic press foe.