Where were the calls for Blair to resign?

LORD Butler had anticipated that he would be asked if Tony Blair should resign during the press conference launching his report into the road to war with Iraq last week. We’re told he might well have been more equivocal in his answer than his report’s specific support for John Scarlett’s promotion to head MI6, even though Scarlett was criticised for allowing the Joint Intelligence Committee to get too close to the Downing Street propaganda machine.

Coming from a senior mandarin renowned for his caution, any hint that Butler thought this was a resigning issue for Blair would have been stark and it would have dominated the following day’s press coverage. Strangely, none of the assembled journalists bothered to ask.

Nor were their editors in a hanging mood, either: none of Blair’s critics on the Right (such as the Sunday Times, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday), or on the Left (the Guardian, the Independent, the Daily Mirror, the Financial Times, the Observer) called for the Prime Minister to go in the aftermath of Butler.

Some newspapers pulled their punches. Despite its strident anti-war campaign, the Mirror was downright docile in its criticisms, even though it had some right to feel vindicated. But Piers Morgan has gone, and the new editor clearly feels the paper must return to its traditional role as Labour cheerleader in the run-up to the election.

The Sun did Blair an outright favour by burying its Butler story on the inside pages, much to the chagrin of political editor Trevor Kavanagh, and even ran a highly supportive editorial. Tory hopes that Rupert Murdoch would swing the Sun behind Michael Howard come the next election have faded as fast as his prospects of winning that election.

The anti-war Independent and Guardian were the two newspapers most likely to call for Blair’s resignation, post-Butler, and strong editorials along such lines could have had considerable influence, especially on Labour back-benches. But both demurred.

The Guardian has considered a magisterial "Blair must go" editorial for much of this year, but always concluded that the time was not right. There is no point in demanding Blair’s resignation, a senior Guardian executive explained to me, if it’s unlikely to happen.

Newspapers are at their most influential when pushing at a door that is already opening. Editors thought that Blair’s position was secure enough, post-Butler, for their editorials calling for his departure to make little difference.

Newspapers are also reluctant to get too far ahead of their readers, and left-wing editors believe that their readers, however disillusioned with Blair, are not quite ready to see him go.

They might be misreading public opinion. This week’s ICM poll in the Guardian found that 55 per cent of voters thought Blair had lied (as opposed to misled or obfuscated) about Iraq. While it also showed Labour comfortably winning the next election with Blair in charge, it predicted a far bigger winning margin if Gordon Brown was leader.

Of course, a right-wing newspaper calling on Blair to step down would carry little clout. But the door might be more open than disillusioned left-wing editors think. Perhaps one of them should have taken the risk and tried to lead public opinion, rather than wait for the time to be ripe. Readers might well have responded positively. But it would have meant the end of those cosy one-to-ones with the PM at No10.

Sky spoils the 24-hour fun

THE FINAL episode of series three of Kiefer Sutherland’s 24 takes place tonight, so please don’t call between 9pm and 10pm. I have been as hooked on the third series about biological terrorism in Los Angeles as I was on the first two. But I must admit that it has lost that feeling of event television since it moved from BBC2 to Sky One.

The BBC built a cult following for 24 by running it at 10pm on Sunday nights on BBC2, then following up with a sneak preview of next week’s episode on BBC3. There was even a discussion programme about that night’s shows after that on BBC3 called Pure 24.

Addicts of 24, like me, lapped it up; there was plenty to talk about with fellow fans the next day. (I even gave Sunday night 24 supper parties!) Sky One did none of that and because it was on a satellite channel, fewer people saw it at all.

Nor was Thursday night a good choice: too many of the younger viewers attracted to 24 were out partying; even I had to record most of the episodes because of work commitments.

As a result, the third series has been a bit of a disappointment for Sky One.

But 24’s poor ratings are only a symptom of the channel’s wider malaise. Ratings for the channel are plummeting because of its over-reliance on American imports and its failure, despite being launched 15 years ago, to develop British programmes of popularity and distinction. One reason I decided to stop running Sky and return full-time to the Sunday Times in 1991 was because Rupert Murdoch refused to invest in British programming. He thought the whole schedule could be filled with US fare. Now I read that the channel is to reinvent itself by going more upmarket via new UK productions.

Indeed, as I write this, an e-mail arrives asking if I’d like to be involved in a new factual show which is part of Sky One’s strategy to relaunch itself as a more upmarket channel targeting a more sophisticated audience. About time, too: after 24 ceases on Thursday night, the only show it has worth watching is The Simpsons.

Extent of Times losses still unclear

NEWS International supremo, Les Hinton, gave nothing away in his Financial Times interview yesterday and left the extent of the Times’ losses an unresolved mystery.

Company accounts show that the Times and the Sunday Times lost £27 million between them in the year ending mid-2003. Since the Sunday Times is profitable, simple arithmetic suggests the Times alone lost a lot more than £27 million.

Even in a bad year for advertising, it would be reasonable to assume that the Sunday paper made £25 million, which would put losses at the Times closer to £50 million, an amazing figure, if true.

Ad revenues have improved since the middle of last year, but the Times now has to bear the £12-15 million annual cost of producing tabloid and broadsheet editions.

So its losses could still be close to £50 million in the financial year just ended. Hence the recent job cuts and cost savings. But there is a wider point.

The Times has now been in the tender care of the greatest media mogul in the world (Rupert Murdoch) for almost a quarter of a century. Despite all that time and the huge investment Murdoch has made in the paper, it still makes huge losses.

Yet the Telegraph, which has been in the hands of a less accomplished proprietor (Conrad Black), who also had a penchant for trousering, rather than investing, any spare million pounds that weren’t nailed down, managed to make profits of more than £30 million last year and will make more than that this year.

Makes you wonder whether Murdoch really knows about broadsheet as opposed to tabloid newspapers.

Mauled by faceless assassins

JOURNALISTS who cross the government need to brace themselves for a good kicking from its spin machine. Andrew Marr’s reward for daring to say that the Butler Report was actually quite critical of Tony Blair and his kitchen cabinet was to have the usual anonymous sources in 10 Downing Street describe the BBC political editor’s report as a "pant-wetting" broadcast and to dismiss him as "an extension of showbiz journalism".

All this was lovingly relayed by the political correspondent of the Times, Tom Baldwin, whose cosy links with Downing Street are legendary. During the McCarthy era in the United States, those suspected of Communist sympathies were dragged before a congressional Un-American Activities Committee. At least the hearings happened in public and the accused had a chance to defend themselves.

In Blairite Britain, journalists with an unhealthy independence of mind have their characters assassinated by faceless spinners behind Downing Street’s closed doors.

Shell shock

WE HAD a live snail race on BBC 1’s This Week last Thursday (no, I’m not sure why either - something to do with animal rights). Each snail had a little picture of a well-known political or media figure stuck on its back, including one of me and one of Gordon Brown.

There was much mirth in the studio and the gallery when, halfway through the race, my snail mounted Gordon’s. "There’s nothing sexual about it," I explained afterwards. "It’s what happens when an Edinburgh graduate gets in the way of a Glasgow one: we just go straight over the top of them." Not sure that my largely Oxbridge production team had a clue what I was talking about.

A headline full of surprise

"Andrew Neil is sexy" - headline in Tuesday’s Guardian. Yes, the Guardian! I had to do a double-take, too - then lie down in a dark room for a few hours.