Sir John Major at Leveson: Murdoch told me to switch policy on Europe

 
12 June 2012
WEST END FINAL

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Sir John Major today told how Rupert Murdoch urged him to change his policy on Europe or his newspapers could not support the Tories at the next election.

Appearing at the Leveson inquiry, the former prime minister recalled a dinner with the media mogul and his daughter Elisabeth in February 1997 — just months before Labour won a landslide election victory with the Sun’s backing.

Sir John told the inquiry: “Mr Murdoch said he really didn’t like our European policies. This was no surprise to me… he wishes me to change our European policies.

“If we couldn’t change our European policies, his papers could not and would not support the Conservative Government.”

The former premier said he believed that what Mr Murdoch was “edging towards was a referendum on leaving the European Union”.

This appeared to contradict Mr Murdoch’s evidence to the inquiry when he said: “I’ve never asked a Prime Minister for anything”.

Sir John was questioned why his account of the meeting differed from that in his autobiography.

Defending his evidence, he said: “It is not very often that someone sits in front of a PM and says to a PM, ‘I would like you to change your policy, and if you don’t change your policy, my organisation cannot support you’… it’s unlikely to have been something I would have forgotten.”

Sir John also denied that former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie had told him he would “pour a bucket of s**t” over his head in the paper’s coverage of the humiliation of Britain crashing out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.

When he appeared at the inquiry in January, Mr MacKenzie said he told Sir John: “‘I’ve got a bucket of s**t on my desk, Prime Minister, and I’m going to pour it all over you.”

However, Sir John told Lord Justice Leveson of his recollection of the infamous phone call, which he said had “assumed an air of mythology”.

He said: “I have read the substance of the alleged conversation with a degree of wonder and surprise. If the conversation had proceeded that way I do not think I would have forgotten it. Neither do I think Mr MacKenzie would have been invited to Downing Street 12 months later.”

Later, he added: “I would have recalled the bit that has entered mythology. I’m sure I would have recalled that, but I don’t recall it.”

The former Conservative leader, who was prime minister from 1990 to 1997, also spoke candidly of his appalling relationship with the press.

Sir John admitted that he had been “much too sensitive” about what newspapers wrote about him and said he believed they were “hostile to him” because he “kept his distance”.

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