Alex looks at the trouble in the Murdoch empire:
There’s a genuinely weird feeling to this. Obviously there’s some sort of political re-alignment going on, but it’s impossible to say what it is or how far it will go. It all seems to be dependent on things like the story about the journalist who started taping all his phone calls because his drinking problem meant he couldn’t remember what they told him and he feared they would use this to exploit him. Charming people. Someone apparently has copies. But who?
Newly established authoritarian regimes are always the most vulnerable during their succession process, as various Roman generals turned emperors found out on their deathbed. The Murdoch empire has had scandals and legal troubles before, but Murdoch has always been too useful for some and too powerful for others to have been bothered too much. that was Rubert though; but who is afraid of James?