Why does Rupert Want War?

Several contributors have asked this week why support for the Afghan and Iraq wars was so important to the Murdoch organisation, and why it was such an  important part of the deals made with Anthony Blair and David Cameron.

I think it is because Mr Murdoch genuinely believes in the aggressive neo-conservative globalist idea, which lies behind  these wars.

He is a revolutionary radical ( I believe he had a bust of Lenin in his rooms at Oxford), who has of course grown out of that sort of teenage left-wing view, but still seeks a home for his utopianism. He is also  strongly prejudiced against the old-fashioned British establishment and the monarchy, the class system, closed borders and national sovereignty.

The 1981 film 'Gallipoli', starring, yes, Mel Gibson, which I think he backed, has been accused of perpetuating a number of anti-British myths about that campaign which are still widely believed in Australia, and was marketed – very annoyingly to me – as 'from a place you  never  heard of, a story you'll never forget'. In my generation, we'd certainly all heard of Gallipoli, and the implication that hadn't was rather insulting.

I have always been much more baffled by his unyielding opposition to British membership of the Euro, a rare blast of support for national sovereignty against its foes.

I also suspect that Mr Murdoch's commercial ends are – or certainly were - greatly aided by his strong support for a certain kind of rather basic American patriotism, which won him friends among the more simple-minded Washington politicians. But as it happens I suspect his feelings on this score are quite genuine. He is an anti-sovereignty, open borders interventionist neo-conservative, who has become a US citizen and, so far as I know, means it.