Media: News Corporation

Lord Glasman Excerpts

Friday 15th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Glasman]

My Lords, it is with some nervousness that I speak. This is only the second time that I have spoken in your Lordships’ House—and I know that the first time all noble Lords had to behave themselves.

I am also nervous because I am extremely angry. This is the story of my life because I grew up with Murdoch’s increasing power. The noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, is not in his place today but as I was growing up there was a systematic rubbishing and persecution of the noble Lord and an endless denigration of the office of the leader of the Labour Party which took relentless forms. The noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, is a man like any other man: he has got vices but he also has the tremendous virtues of compassion, a love of justice and a love of people, and he showed a real determination when he faced down the ugliest parts of our party. We knew that and yet it never came through. That is when I began to realise that there was a systematic power to what Murdoch was doing to make or break leaders. For more than 30 years, no political party or Prime Minister has won an election without Murdoch’s support. He has the power to make and break kings.

This is not a party issue—new Labour was extremely complicit in accommodating Murdoch. That is why I have tremendous pride in the leader of the Labour Party for confronting Murdoch’s power in Parliament. The Sun, Sky and the Times—but the Sun in particular—were already beginning to denigrate Ed Miliband; they started running six-minute loops of his repeated mistakes, pulling panda eyes and were beginning systematically to attack him.

When the leader of the Labour Party stood up to Murdoch it reminded me of the biblical story of King David. King David was sitting in his farm looking after his sheep—his brothers were generals and lieutenants in King Saul’s army—and Goliath, the great bully, the giant who was going to attack them, was standing before him. Aristotle said that anyone outside law and relationships is either a beast or a god. In our contemporary life, Murdoch has been like a beast and a god: he could attack you and destroy you or he could give you great power and glory. He was outside of constraints and outside of law. It was with great courage that the leader of the Labour Party stood—as King David stood—before the bully and, with a single stone, laid him down and began this change.

It is a great honour to the Government that they followed the lead of the Labour Party and began to speak of some virtue in our lives—because what we have had is vice. What Murdoch has bought, and we can see it all around us, is accommodation, corruption and fear. We can see it in the police and the Government; in both sides, there is a real fear to speak freely and a relentless war on the daily lives of politicians. There are good days and bad days—we all have them—but our civility was coarsened by Murdoch. It is a wonderful thing that it is Parliament which has stood and that within Parliament we have asserted that this tyranny cannot go on.

Every day when I come in, I give thanks to the statues of the barons around here, because they held the sword to King John’s throat when he said that the King could rule without Parliament. They said that it always had to be a relationship and that the King had to rule in Parliament. Whoever held the sword to Murdoch’s throat? Who was Murdoch accountable to? He was a beast and he was a god—he was outside of all relations. So it is a wonderful thing if we can follow the Commons’ lead here and say that in our politics we need courage and leadership and that people make mistakes, but we in this country govern and rule ourselves with our free institutions and choose our own leaders. It is not to be dictated to us by foreign multimillionaires who rules us and who does not, who is credible and who is not.

I urge noble Lords to remember that this Chamber is the crown of the constitution. Our obligations are to uphold the ancient liberties and the balance in the constitution to make sure that there is always reciprocity and balance in relationships—and I am sure that today we will not fail to uphold that duty.