The fall of the house of Murdoch

"A week is a long time in politics," a one-time British prime minister, Harold Wilson, once said. Rarely in Britain has the adage seemed truer than now.

Go back a few weeks, and British Prime Minister David Cameron was on a roll. He had thoroughly outmanoeuvred his deputy, Nick Clegg, allowing his Conservative Party to dominate the coalition. His opponent across the aisle of the House of Commons, Labour leader Ed Miliband, looked shaky. His grip on his own party was wobbling, and mutterings of discontent were rising.

Then along came the phone-hacking scandal that has gripped Britain for the last couple of weeks. The steady stream of revelations, the sudden resignations of two senior police officers - one of whom hinted strongly at a "go ye and do likewise" to the prime minister - and the dramatic humbling of the heads of Britain's largest media empire before a House of Commons committee have suddenly put Mr Cameron on the back foot. For his part, Ed Miliband is looking very much like the skinny kid in the schoolyard who just knocked down the bully.

Back in 1992, when an unpopular Conservative government won re-election, the decisive blow to Labour was seen to have been delivered by Rupert Murdoch's papers. One of them, The Sun, proudly blared on its front page, 'It's the Sun wot won it.' The view formed among some of the younger politicians in Labour, Tony Blair among them, was that Labour could no longer regard the Murdochs as enemies. After Blair took over the party, 'New Labour' assiduously courted them.

Switching allegiance

The party's persistence was rewarded in 1997, when The Sun switched sides, endorsed Labour, and helped the party come to power. Ever since, the conventional wisdom in British politics was that Rupert Murdoch was the power behind the throne. Everyone wanted to befriend him, and nobody wanted him as an enemy. This gave him extraordinary leverage over democratically elected governments.

Few people put as much stock in this home truth as Cameron. He built warm relationships with Mr Murdoch and executives of his News International Corporation, sought their advice, and hired one of Murdoch's former employees to work for him. In the process, he further cemented ties to the power of Rupert Murdoch and his son and successor, James.

When The Guardian breathed new life into the news-hacking scandal with a report that one of the Murdoch papers had hacked the voicemail of a murdered teenager, Miliband made what turned out to be a shrewd decision: to distance himself from the Murdochs. For his part, Mr Cameron stood by the Murdochs.

As they have sunk into the mud, Mr Cameron has been dragged down with him. Mr Miliband looks newly invigorated. And the scandal may turn out to be a slow-burn, in which revelations drive closer and closer to the heart of government, making Cameron look too close to the now-disgraced media barons.

How the mighty have fallen

There is an interesting sidebar to this story. The speed of Mr Murdoch's fall from grace may reveal the depth of resentment he has long provoked among many Britons, particularly those on the left of the political spectrum. But it may also reveal that his power had largely evaporated. Back in 1992, most Britons got their news from the press and television. Today, young voters especially ignore the papers, and go online. Mr Murdoch's business empire has struggled to adapt to the Internet age.

Elsewhere in Europe, in Italy, the sudden decline of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, precipitated by recent defeats in local elections, suggests a similar trend. In Italy, Berlusconi married press and politics, being both the prime minister and a dominant media magnate. He didn't have to court the press, he owned it. And he had long banked on his ability to control the public agenda.

He hadn't factored in that young voters neither read newspapers nor watch television. They surf the Net, and the blogosphere had lit up against Berlusconi. The game has changed. Controlling the press no longer delivers political power. Those who, like Mr Cameron, invested heavily in the old model, are racing to catch up.

John Rapley is the Bradlow fellow at the South African Institute of International Affairs. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and rapley.john@gmail.com.