Vote Murdoch!

As well as 39% of BSkyB, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp controls News International, whose titles include the Times, Sunday Times, Sun, News of the World and the London Paper freesheet. In the US, News Corp owns the social networking website MySpace, the New York Post and the Fox entertainment network, which includes the right wing Fox News, 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight Pictures. It also owns the publishing house HarperCollins, and newspapers in Australasia including the Australian.

　On 26 June 2009 Ofcom published a report into the pay-TV market. After long investigation, it concluded that Sky had a monopolistic control: its 80% of Premier League football and 100% of movies from the big Hollywood studios prevent others from entering the market, and Sky sells these rights to others at too high a price. As a competition regulator, Ofcom's job is to keep the market open. Its new ruling requires Sky to sell on its rights to all comers at some 30% less than it currently charges. BT reckoned this will drop the average cost of watching top-flight football by £10 a month.

Sure enough, the next day his newspapers sharpened their knives. The Sun's Fergus Shanahan: "This is the world gone mad. Ofcom, the official telly regulator, says a successful and popular firm – Sky – must be penalised for doing well … This nonsense – rewarding losers by punishing winners – is Ofcom's way of 'improving competition'. Ofcom busybodies also have the nerve to threaten to dictate what prices shareholder-owned firms like Sky can charge. That's despotic, not democratic, and it's what they do in Russia." No, what they do in Russia these days is to grant monopolies to oligarchs and that's why Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading exist — to prevent it happening here.  Just 10 days later, last Monday, David Cameron made a surprise speech about quangos. His team asked the rightwing thinktank Reform to set up the event at just a few days' notice. It looked like the standard speech made by all oppositions promising cuts in "the quango state". But one astonishing new commitment stuck out, even though it was barely noticed in most reports: "Ofcom as we know it will cease to exist. Its remit will be restricted to narrow technical and enforcement roles. It will no longer play a role in making policy." It would be knocked back to "regulating lightly". Had there been a great popular outcry calling for the demolition of Ofcom?

Within hours of Cameron's speech, leading market analysts UBS Investment Research assessed the potential impact: "This bodes well for Sky … We believe that a lighter-touch approach would result in a far better and fairer outcome for Sky, the consumer and the pay market. This could result in a valuation of over 750p versus circa 650p under Ofcom's current proposals." In plain English, if the Conservatives come to power and abolish Ofcom, expect a £1 share price rise for Sky – worth some £1.7bn.

The timing and content of Cameron's speech may, of course, be purely coincidental. Former Murdoch man Andy Coulson may have nothing to do with it. I have no shred of evidence to the contrary. The Tories have every reason to dislike Ofcom chief Ed Richards, a former Blair adviser paid £400,000 a year. But behind the scenes the players in this drama, other companies, analysts and observers were stunned. Few dare speak for publication, fearing the wrath of the incoming Conservatives. Ofcom will not be drawn. The one bold voice was Peter Luff, Conservative chair of the business and enterprise select committee. "Ofcom is a bloody great regulator," he told me. "I believe in free markets and I'm very pro-competition. It needs powerful people."

Cameron's office says there was "no contact with News International" about Ofcom but history should not be ignored. The Murdoch press has a long record of winning pay-back from the political leaders it backs – and it has vigorously swung behind Cameron. In fact, it is so ordinary that too few people bother to keep remarking on the evil influence this man has had on politics for the past 30 years.

In his memoirs, John Major counts his downfall from the day Murdoch gave him the imperial thumbs-down. Blair fawned and obeyed, right from his shocking acquiescence to the Tory 1996 Broadcasting Act, which gave Murdoch total control of the digital future. The night before the crucial Iraq war vote, virtually the entire cabinet attended Sun editor David Yelland's farewell party. All Tory and Labour leaders canoodle with Murdoch with a desperation that demeans them and their office.

Is it any wonder the public don't know what to believe when a media oligarch is telling us what we should believe.