DAVID Cameron may have done “some sort of a deal” with media tycoon Rupert Murdoch to win his newspapers’ support ahead of the 2010 general election, former Cabinet minister Kenneth Clarke has claimed.
Mr Clarke said the deal appeared to involve the installation of former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as “Murdoch’s man” in the post of communications director at 10 Downing Street.
And he recounted how Mr Cameron arranged a meeting for him as Justice Secretary with then News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, who told him she was “running the Government”
in partnership with the prime minister.
Mr Clarke’s comments were made in evidence to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) inquiry into the proposed takeover of Sky by 21st Century Fox at a hearing earlier this month, a transcript of which has now been made public.
The former minister, who served as Mr Cameron’s justice secretary from 2010 to 2012, told the CMA: “Quite how David Cameron got The Sun out of the hands of Gordon Brown I shall never know. Rupert would never let Tony (Blair) down because Tony had backed the Iraq war.
“Maybe it was some sort of a deal. David would not tell me what it was. Suddenly we got the Murdoch empire on our side.”
Mr Clarke said: “Within a week or two we had got Andy Coulson on board – I think he was Murdoch’s man, that was part of the deal I assume – as the press officer. I am not being tot ally indiscreet.
Nobody seemed bothered by it very much.”
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