A Commonplace Book

For the past decade and a half, Murdoch has been trying to fend off what he sees as the encroachment of a European superstate. One of the reasons he turned against John Major was that Major wanted Britain to establish closer ties with the European Community. "I thought that was abdicating responsibility to unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels," Murdoch told me. "And I still think that. There are good things about Europe, such as a unified market, but that's a different matter. To give social policy, legal policy, human rights, and so on over to some anonymous body is crazy."