No hate figure worthy of name left to fill the Murdoch vacuum

The arch-Beelzebub’s loss of menace leaves lefties bereft of a bête noire

RUPERT MURDOCH did us all a disservice this week. Brought before a special committee of the House of Commons, he failed to have his giant killer lizards tear the livers from the puny inquisitors.

When pressed about the News of the World's telephonic enormities, he somehow resisted the temptation to fling his head back and cackle manically like Vincent Price during one of his undead moments. No parliamentary heads ended up on spikes.

Not exactly cowed, but not properly arrogant, Murdoch senior came across like a retired doctor summoned from his Floridian condominium to deal with a faulty septic tank.

Then we had the incident with the shaving-foam pie. The temptation to make cheap cracks about men who marry much younger women is close to irresistible. There was, however, undeniably something emasculating about the way Wendi Deng, the great man’s 42-year-old wife, took control of the octogenarian at the inquiry.

She nudged him aggressively as he began banging a wrinkly fist on the table. When the attack came, she sprang to her feet with the speed of an angry praying mantis and delivered a bone-crushing haymaker to the prankster’s witless face.

Now, look. We chaps are all very grown up about gender these days. We don’t mind (or pretend we don’t mind) if our partners earn more money than we do. It’s smashing that women can now become airline pilots, prime ministers, racing drivers and so forth.

But no man – not even one who wears sandals when buying the Guardian – wants his girlfriend to take the senior position in a bar room brawl. Speaking as somebody who hasn’t been in a fight since 1972 (they really were my Toffos, honest) and therefore has no idea what he’s talking about, I would never allow a lady to glass anybody on my behalf.

Anyway, the point here is that Murdoch, arch-Beelzebub of Melbourne, has just lost the greater part of his menace. For the last 30 years or so, Rupert has been, for suburban folk of liberal stripe, a stubbornly resilient repository of hatred and distrust.

Perhaps you once babysat for a middle-class Murdoch hater. “There’s Peroni and carpaccio in the fridge,” they might have said. “Oh, no. I am afraid you won’t be able to watch the football match. We don’t allow any Murdoch media in the house.”

Such conversations did take place. Political hate figures have come and gone. Before teetering into derangement, Margaret Thatcher kept the bile glands of a million urban lefties healthily active in the 1980s.

Ronald Reagan did the job on the other side of the Atlantic.

The magnificent George W Bush, a man who appeared to inhabit his own Spitting Imagepuppet, kindly stepped up at the beginning of the new century.

Billy Bragg wrote songs about these people. They served as the punch lines to jokes by comedians in donkey jackets. Then, one by one, each stepped off the political stage. Life seemed a little empty while we waited for the next satanic Philistine to step forward.

Never mind. There was still Rupert Murdoch. The Australian magnate has always been the perfect bête noire for a certain class of self-righteous artisan-cheese-eater.

His papers were crude, bold and brash. One never read the (what's it called again?) News of the Worldoneself, but, glancing at the scraps left by the men who tiled the bathroom, one could be fairly sure that it had little in common with The London Review of Books.

Though (like Thatcher) no friend of the creaky establishment, Rupert encouraged the promotion of a right-wing agenda that steadily and insidiously ate away at the UK’s liberal post-war consensus.

Moreover, there was just so darn much of him. Gobbling up 40 per cent of Britain's print media – a mere amuse bouchebefore embarking on the main course that was the world's TV news channels – wasn't just sinister and aggressive; it seemed more than a little vulgar.

No wonder all the nice left-wing people hated Rupert.

Who are they going to loathe now? Look around. Despite failing to become the secular saint too many acolytes expected, Barack Obama has some way to go before evolving into a fascist demigod.

The weightless David Cameron is no more than a smear of Gentleman’s Relish on a bolt of Saville Row cloth.

Berlusconi is so preposterous one half-suspects that he doesn’t actually exist. Sarkozy won’t last.

The grim fact is that, having won all the important battles in the 1980s and 1990s, the right no longer needs to summon aggressive annihilators from its brimstone-wreathed pit. Mild administrators such as Cameron will do very nicely.

Meanwhile, our era’s hate figures turn out to be preening artificial constructs from reality television programmes.

Simon Cowell (Boo!) is, perhaps, both the most hated and the most loved person in these islands. That doesn’t feel right.

Don’t go, Rupert. We so need somebody to despise.