Theresa May had a private meeting with Rupert Murdoch during a flying visit to New York last week, in which she made her maiden speech to the UN as prime minister.
May met the media mogul, who owns the Times and the Sun newspapers, as well as Sky in the UK, on a trip that lasted less than 36 hours. The meeting, less than three months after she was appointed prime minister, is notable given her previous reputation for keeping the media at arm’s length.
A supporter of the remain camp during the EU referendum, May kept a relatively low profile throughout the campaign. Murdoch has made little secret of his antipathy towards Brussels.
When asked by the journalist Anthony Hilton why he was so opposed to the EU, Murdoch is said to have replied: “When I go into Downing Street, they do what I say; when I go to Brussels, they take no notice.”
His meetings with British leaders became public when he told an influential committee of MPs that he “often entered Downing Street by the back door”.
The meeting between Murdoch and May, never part of the “Chipping Norton set” of her predecessor, David Cameron, suggests that she is happy to nurture a relationship between Downing Street and the Murdoch media empire, which had been strained by the phone-hacking scandal.
Last Christmas saw the beginning of a rapprochement, when Cameron and some of his senior ministers attended a party at Murdoch’s London house.
May managed to squeeze in the meeting with Murdoch during the one-night trip. On Tuesday evening, after the speech, May met staff from his Wall Street Journal title. Downing Street confirmed that a “brief meeting” had taken place.
She spent most of her time in the US having meetings with world leaders, but also hosted a reception for businesspeople to convince them that the UK remains a good place to invest. Among those invited to the consul general’s residence were executives from Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Black Rock, IBM and Morgan Stanley.
Although it was the Daily Mail that came out most forcefully for May during the Conservative leadership battle, both Murdoch-owned national daily British papers supported her going up against the former Times writer Michael Gove.
The Sun’s leader read: “The final choice for our next prime minister must be between Theresa May and Michael Gove. No one else will do.”
Gove, the former justice secretary and leave campaigner, has subsequently started writing again for the Times as a columnist and book reviewer.
Speaking at the general assembly, May argued that the British people’s vote to leave the EU was a sign that they want a “politics that is more in touch with their concerns and bold action to address them”.
“The challenge for those of us in this room is to ensure our governments and our global institutions, such as this United Nations, remain responsive to the people that we serve,” she said.
News Corp declined to comment.