Leader of the Liberal Democrats and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has been named number 20 in the Guardian “Media 100” list of the most powerful figures in the media, making him the second highest ranking politician (coming in below only the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, who was at 13).
In a list that is clearly overshadowed by the News of the World phone hacking (note Lord Justice Leveson‘s abrupt promotion to the top ten, and Tom Watson‘s appearance on the list at 45, apparently the highest placed Labour politician, for his dogged work pursuing the scandal) this is an interesting (and useful) endorsement for the DPM and the Liberal Democrats from a generally hostile media.
It is recognition that the driving force behind the judge-led inquiry into the hacking affair and general media standards has been Nick and not Ed Miliband (the Labour Leader has caught up with the public mood pretty quickly after a hesitant start, but it’s still only a few weeks since he was schmoozing at a party with the same News International executives he now denounces and, as Mr Cameron put it, is now the only Party Leader to employ an ex-News Corp spin doctor).
It’s good to see that the Prime Minister is now taking the advice of the Deputy Prime Minister when it comes to addressing the whole question of the relationship between politicians and news barons; we can only imagine that Dave is ruing the day he ignored Nick’s advice about Andy Coulson.
And as the article states explicitly, “the Liberal Democrats are the only one out of the three main political parties not to have spent much of the past two decades wooing Murdoch’s News Corporation”.
That’s a little unfair of the Graun… with Alex Salmond facing questions about the closeness of the SNP to the Murdoch Empire, the Liberal Democrats are, of course, the only one of the four largest parties not to have engaged in the Murdoch love-in.
(To be fair, other minor parties haven’t sucked up to Murdoch either. I’m sure the Greens are no fans of News International, even if Green AM and Mayoral candidate Jenny Jones did say the police were spending too much time investigating hacking; and nor are UKIP, although a quick perusal of their website seems to shows their objections mostly about being excluded from the Leadership debates at the 2010 election and that the B-Sky-B takeover was approved by the EU.)
And in Doctor Who related news, series show-runner Steven Moffat also enters the top 100 (at 92).
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8 Comments
The thing is – I’m as glad as anybody that this has happened, that corruption has been exposed and is being tackled, but I’ve honestly been disappointed in Clegg and the Lib Dem response to it. Miliband was able to hog all of the limelight that should, rightfully, have been yours, and you should have been there pointing out his and Labour’s breathtaking hypocrisy. Why are we only hearing Lib Dem voices now?
And by the way, the fourth-largest party are the Northern Irish Democratic Unionists, not the SNP, as of the 2010 election. I have no idea if they’ve tried sucking up to Newscorp or not, though I’ll take a guess at ‘have tried, but not successfully’.
“. . . with Alex Salmond facing questions about the closeness of the SNP to the Murdoch Empire, the Liberal Democrats are, of course, the only one of the four largest parties not to have engaged in the Murdoch love-in.”
Sorry to interrupt your little “aren’t we Lib Dems so wonderful” fantasy with an inconvenient fact:
On polling day of the 2007 Scottish election Murdoch’s Sun newspaper portrayed the SNP logo as a noose and a headline that boomed: “VOTE SNP TODAY AND YOU PUT SCOTLAND’S HEAD IN THE NOOSE”.
If you believe the SNP were willing to take part in a “love-in” with Murdoch’s newspapers after that incident you must be even more seriously deluded than your ‘article’ suggests.
UKIP’s concern that ‘the B-Sky-B takeover was approved by the EU’ is surely justified. With the EU moving ever closer to a centrally governed ‘United States of Europe’, surely the opportunities and likelyhood of corruption by global corporations of politicians, the police and officials becomes exponentially more likely – with 27 nations drawn together for the purpose of lawmaking the sums available for bribery and corruption are greatly increased.
Corrupt government is the amongst the most disastrous condition for those governed – this being the case, why is this matter not taken more seriously by the leadership?
The Party’s leadership will never justify its unbending support for ever closer union, will not put forward a cost/benefit analysis to demonstrate the economic value of our membership, has sabotaged the possibility of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, has flown in the face of public opinion on our membership and must recognise that a United States of Europe effectively ends democracy for the people of the included nations.
Given these, isn’t the Party’s leadership leaving itself open to the accusation that it relishes the opportunity to be corrupted? Particularly when combined to the rumour that Cameron will offer NC the job of European Commissioner before the end of the Coalition agreement!
Number twenty in the Guardian is a) appaling – for a Lib Dem DPM; b) astonishing – for someone so widely ignored.
“Leader of the Liberal Democrats and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has been named number 20 in the Guardian “Media 100″ list of the most powerful figures in the media, making him the second highest ranking politician (coming in below only the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, who was at 13).”
Have you any idea how desperate this sounds?
@Hove Howard
Does it?
face it millipede was good over hacking and stop the desperate anti labour propaganda – whose vote do you think youre winning???? your own members…
I hardly think that an article which praises Tom Watson for “dogged” performance can be accused of “desperate anti-Labour propoganda”. Miliband might be saying some of the right things on phone hacking now, but he was (rightly, given his party’s associations with News International) hesitant and cautious at first.