Cable stays despite Murdoch fiasco

Vince Cable. Photo / Getty Images.

A wounded Vince Cable clung on to his job as Britain's Business Secretary yesterday after an astonishing attack on Rupert Murdoch backfired.

The Liberal Democrat minister was branded a "lame duck" after his remarks to two Daily Telegraph undercover female reporters posing as constituents raised severe doubts about his judgment.

In a single-party Government, such comments from a minister with a quasi-judicial role in takeovers would almost certainly have forced him to quit.

Officials warned that his outspoken comments, in which he said he had "declared war" on the media magnate, had prejudged a crucial ruling he was due to make on the attempt by Murdoch's News Corporation to buy the 61 per cent of shares in BSkyB it does not already own.

But Cable, the second most senior Liberal Democrat in the coalition Government after Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, was allowed to retain his Cabinet post.

Instead, his department was stripped of competition and policy issues relating to media, broadcasting and the digital and telecoms sectors. They go to Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative Culture, Media and Sport Secretary. About 70 officials will switch departments.

Hunt's involvement is likely to reassure Murdoch, as Hunt has been critical of Murdoch's arch-rival, the BBC. MPs believe the takeover is more likely to be waved through by Hunt than if the decision had been left to Cable.

The Business Secretary, who had already referred the News Corp bid to the media regulator Ofcom, told the journalists: "I have declared war on Mr Murdoch and I think we are going to win.

"I have blocked it using the ... legal powers that I have got. His whole empire is now under attack ... Things like that we do in Government that we can't do [in Opposition] ... all we can do [there] is protest."

News Corp said it was "shocked and dismayed" by the remarks, saying they "raise serious questions about fairness and due process". Officials warned Prime Minister David Cameron and Clegg that the Government could have been hit by a judicial review had the decision remained in Cable's hands.

Labour leader Ed Miliband called for Cable to be sacked: "David Cameron has made the wrong judgment and he has kept Vince Cable on, not because of the national interest but because his Conservative-led Government needs the prop which Vince Cable provides. Having apparently breached the ministerial code ... he shouldn't [remain] in office."

The BBC put its business interests to one side to bring Cable's remarks to public notice.

The Daily Telegraph had published on Tuesday a transcript of most of what the Business Secretary told its undercover reporters, but held back the part in which he talked about Rupert Murdoch and BSkyB.

Someone inside the newspaper leaked the missing section to the BBC's business editor, Robert Peston, who broke the story on air, despite the risk that it might improve Murdoch's BSkyB chances.

In October, the heads of most of the major media organisations signed an open letter to Cable, urging him to block Murdoch's plans, fearing that they could give him such a dominant position in the market - bringing the Times, Sun and Sky News under one company - that it would undermine competition.

Signatories included Murdoch MacLennan, chief executive of Telegraph newspapers, and Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC.

The Daily Telegraph yesterday denied that it had intended to suppress the Murdoch story permanently.

- Independent