Just as there was a better Britain before Murdoch, there will be a better one after his demise

Before Murdoch got hold of the News of the World, it was a harmless scandal sheet you hid from the vicar. By the time he closed it last week, it had become a byword for puerile media decadence. And yet the people he fired were trying to return the paper to its original mission.

Before Murdoch got hold of The Sun, it was a muddled, failing left-of-centre paper run by folks who didn’t know what they were doing. Today it is a cruel, invasive hounder of minor celebrities run by dribbling sociopaths who know exactly what they’re doing.

Before Murdoch got hold of The Times titles, they were read by people running or about to be running Britain – and the papers enjoyed a global reputation for evidenced investigative journalism. Today, they’re read by people with a median reading age of 14 – and are riddled with Newscorp-placed ads and editorial supporting Sky News, Newscorp propaganda, and fashion/property drivel.

When Murdoch got hold of the rights to broadcast UK Premiership football, player salaries were high but commercially viable, the vast majority of them were British, club ownership was 100% British, and the national team remained an international forced to be feared by most teams. In 2011, salaries are obscene, clubs exist solely through the financial whims of corrupt foreign oligarchs, well over half the players are foreign, and the national side is a joke – thanks to starvation of the grassroots game.

Before Murdoch entered the UK media market in 1968, the two most influential press barons of the previous fifty years had been Lord Beaverbrook and Hugh Cudlipp. Neither man in his wildest dreams either expected or wanted to overtly and consistently control which way millions voted – or indeed, influence policy on every issue after an election. Since 1979, not a single Party or Prime Minister has been elected without the support of Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers: those he supported have won, those he deserted have lost. Those who won have, without exception, made Britain a worse place in which to live.

Before Murdoch started insisting on negative Royal reporting in his titles, Republicanism was a movement adhered to by a tiny, bonkers minority of British citizens. Having helped hound the Royal heir’s wife to an early grave, Newscorp deliberately and without remorse hacked into the privacy of her surviving children. Today, salacious stories of Royal behaviour have turned a majority of celebrity-obsessed Brits against the Royals. While the Windsors largely have themselves to blame for this, the brainless cult of celebrity – and a compulsive need to lower debate about the Royal Family to the lowest common denominator – was almost entirely seeded by Murdoch titles.

All this took place because, some sixty years ago, a few of Murdoch’s Oxford contemporaries mocked his accent and referred to Australia as a nation descended from convicts. And – let’s be real here – because Rupert Murdoch himself is a bitter, twisted megalomaniac who was himself brought up to a life of undeserved privilege based on inherited wealth….the very wealth inherited through genetic accident that he claims to despise.

Do not ever forget this. In the next few torrid days, I have little doubt that we will be treated to repeated news footage of this benign, smiling old man who doesn’t wish anyone any harm, really he doesn’t. Well I have news for you: Rupert Murdoch is in the vanguard of those who would reduce global business and media to a censorious brew made up of greedy minorities screwing 93% of the world’s population – telling them who to hate, who to elect, what to buy, how much to pay, and where to buy it. He is a controlling monopolist, the friend of exploitative Americans, repressive Chinese leaders, Australian mining profiteers, and crooked politicians.

Stopping the BSkyB deal is just the beginning. The end will be to expunge Murdoch’s influence from these islands forever.