Theresa May could claw back some credibility by blocking Murdoch's latest bid – but Trump won't let her

Trump and Murdoch are exceedingly close. They are believed to speak every day. Some regard Murdoch as Trump’s most influential adviser outside the West Wing

Master of puppets: when it comes to giving Murdoch what he wants, PMs stretching back to Thatcher have taken a deeply personal interest (Getty)

Don’t beat yourselves up too badly if you missed it – because, frankly, who didn’t? – but one of our most sacred national remembrances slipped by unheralded a couple of weeks ago.

“Humblest Day of My Life” Day fell, to be precise, on 19 July. That was the sixth anniversary of Rupert Murdoch’s stupendously sincere expression of regret before the Commons’ Media Select Committee investigating the News of the World’s interception of Milly Dowler’s phone messages.

In another country, HDOML Day would be a bank holiday. For a few hours, the aroma of barbecuing meat would replace the diesel fumes, and the streets would teem with parties as citizens celebrated the downfall of a pernicious influence.

But here, in this shining beacon to the world of apathy and wilful amnesia, there was no downfall. After a seemly period of establishment posturing, the disgrace that had Murdoch grovelling like Uriah Heep’s faux-senile uncle has been ignored or forgotten.

So it is that the old sweetheart is closer than ever to realising the dream of taking 100 per cent ownership of Sky he graciously postponed after the phone-hacking obscenity.

Within the next few weeks, Karen Bradley, the magnificently obscure culture secretary, will announce whether she is referring the bid to the Competition and Markets Authority, though it can’t really be her call. When it comes to not pissing off Murdoch, PMs stretching back to Thatcher have taken a deeply personal interest.

But even if Bradley is officially the one responsible for asking the CMA to examine it, the deal seems likely to go through; that after Murdoch gives his ritual solemn assurances (that the sex abuser boys’ club culture at Fox has been reformed; that Sky News will retain its political independence), the first rule of UK media life will be obeyed: in the end, Rupert Murdoch always wins.

This is in part because the matter of whether he and his family are “fit and proper persons” to own Sky outright has been settled. The industry regulator Ofcom has already ruled that they are. All that remains to be decided are technical details about market share, media plurality, and so on.

If you fancy a foretaste of what we might expect by way of political neutrality from a Sky News under unfettered Murdoch dominion, a tale from the United States may serve as the ideal appetiser.

In July 2016, Seth Rich, a 27-year-old who worked on digital campaigns for the Democratic National Committee, was shot dead in Washington DC. Nine months later, elements of the American media’s cuddly extreme right – Breitbart, the poisonous Trump hobgoblin Roger Stone, and yes, you guessed it, Fox News – started spinning the theory that Rich, not the Russians, was responsible for the leaked emails that probably cost Hillary Clinton the election. It was even mooted that he was on his way to spill the beans to the FBI when he was shot.

This story was self-evidently helpful to anyone (with or without a tangerine alien life form clamped to the scalp) keen to disabuse the American people of the notion that state-sponsored Russian hackers manipulated the election result. The one tiny flaw was that the story was so blatantly, provably false that Fox had to retract it a week later.

In a lawsuit filed last week by one Rod Wheeler, a former DC homicide cop who is suing Fox for inventing quotes from him about the Rich murder, it is alleged that the White House and Fox colluded to peddle this libelling of a dead man. A Republican donor and Fox News contributor, Ed Butowsky, texted Wheeler with: “The President just read the article. He wants the article out immediately.”

Butowksy claims he was joking. If so, has there been a ribcage-buster like this one since Trump’s masterly ironic inducement to officers to give suspects a hiding when bundling them into the back of police vans?

While no one can be sure yet how directly, if at all, the President was involved in directing the lies towards Fox, one thing not in doubt is this: Trump and Murdoch are exceedingly close. They are believed to speak every day. Some regard Murdoch as Trump’s most influential adviser outside the West Wing. Six years after the inaugural first HDML Day, Murdoch may never have been as powerful as he is today.

In light of these claims about the Murdoch and Trump mobs (this is The Godfather for Wasps) colluding to spread lies helpful to the President, perhaps another glance at that “fit and proper persons” test is indicated. You know, just to determine whether that penchant for defiling the murdered for advantage (financial in Milly Dowler’s case, political with Seth Rich) has outlasted the humility.

And if Theresa May wants to start the new parliamentary session by reminding the country of something else it has long forgotten – her claim to be on the side of the little people, against the power of sinister vested interests – she could do it in seconds with a one-line declaration that she has ruled out Fox’s takeover of Sky.

Sadly, one suspects that once again political pressures – fear of Murdoch setting The Sun on her; cosy chats with Trump in which he subtly links her being nice to Rupert with him being nice about a trade deal – will crush any residual urge to do right by her reverend father and all the pious stuff he used to spout from his pulpit.