July 13th. Unlucky for some. Unlucky for Rupert Murdoch and the News Corporation mafia in particular. Last week there was catharsis as Britain’s shabby political establishment suddenly realised that the Murdoch empire no longer had them by the short and curlies. Today the political, tectonic plates shift as Labour’s relatively new and young leader, Ed Miliband becomes Prime Minister for the day. He does so because it is he and the Labour Party who decided to table a motion calling on Rupert Murdoch to withdraw his £8 billion bid for the majority shareholding in BSkyB. The real Prime Minister, David Cameron, opening and shutting his mouth like a beached goldfish, has had to meekly follow Miliband’s lead – as of course does the ineffectual and increasingly irrelevant Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg.
On Sunday, Rupert Murdoch, who is not a British citizen, who pays no tax here and who presumably has no loyalty to this country at all, closed down a 168 years old British institution, the News of the World newspaper. In doing so he sacked 200 odd people who for the most part had absolutely nothing to do with the phone hacking contagion that is now gripping what used to be called Fleet Street – before Murdoch of course destroyed that. He did so, he though, to pave the way for his cherished BSkyB bid, and to keep in place his firewall against the contagion hitting his son, Rebekah Wade, also his London hatchet woman.
But now he is not going to get his hands on it. And not because of some technical smokescreen, erected for officialdom to trot out by the politicians. But because Ed Miliband has taken the lead. Miliband has come of age on the day the Murdoch Empire in Britain at least, began to die.
For more: The Day The Murdoch Evil Empire Died | As I Please | Big Think
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