At British Inquiry, Cameron Denies ‘Deals’ With Murdoch

Testifying at Britain’s long-running inquiry into media standards, Prime Minister David Cameron rejected suggestions that he traded favored treatment for electoral support by Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers, calling talk of a conspiracy “specious” and “unjustified.”

“The idea of overt deals is nonsense,” he said, also dismissing the idea that there had been “a nod and a wink” covert arrangement with Mr. Murdoch in return for a decision to switch editorial support to Cameron’s Conservatives in 2009, months before a general election. Despite the denial, British commentators seized upon a text message, read to the inquiry by Robert Jay, the lead counsel, suggesting that its author, Rebekah Brooks, who was the chief executive of Mr. Murdoch’s British newspaper subsidiary, believed that “professionally, we’re in this together.” The disclosure of the previously unpublished message was particularly embarrassing for Cameron because it echoed a slogan — “We’re all in this together” — used in the Conservatives’ campaign that brought him to office the following year. Rather than evoking inclusiveness, as was intended at the time, its newest iteration will almost certainly be taken by Cameron’s critics as a sign of his intimacy with the Murdoch elite.