He once admitted to using Downing Street’s back door to celebrate the prime minister’s electoral victory, but on Monday night Rupert Murdoch was expected to welcome David Cameron through the front door of his home to a Christmas soiree for just a “few dozen” friends.

Four years after the phone hacking scandal, which rocked the media and political establishment, Cameron’s appearance at the party is understood to be his first meeting with Murdoch since his re-election in May. Proof that the head of News Corp is back at the centre of power in the UK.



The event at Murdoch’s London flat in St James’s is also set to reunite Cameron with Rebekah Brooks after the News UK chief executive was cleared of all phone hacking charges and three months after she returned to her old job, running Murdoch’s newspapers in the UK.

Sir Martin Sorrell, the chief executive of ad group WPP, said of the media mogul, recently divorced and now 84: “He certainly hasn’t been diminished. If anything, he has more vim and vigour than ever. He is just as powerful a figure and in the future will be even more so.”

Since his re-election in May, Cameron has met the editors of Murdoch’s papers, the Times and the Sun, and has visited parties given by other media moguls – Lord Rothermere, the owner of the Daily Mail, and Evgeny Lebedev, whose father owns the Evening Standard and Independent titles.

Downing Street did not return calls asking for comment on Cameron’s evening plans but his expected appearance was confirmed by News Corp insiders: a decision to return to the Murdoch inner sanctum that is all the more remarkable given the embarrassment his proximity to the Murdoch empire caused him at the height of the hacking scandal.

Full details of the last Christmas party Cameron attended at the Oxfordshire home of Brooks in 2010 only emerged at the Leveson inquiry 18 months later, when the prime minister admitted to “briefly” discussing the company’s bid for the satellite broadcaster Sky as well as his frequent “country suppers” with Brooks and her husband.

One senior Labour party source who had been involved in the hacking inquiry said of Cameron’s appearance at the drinks party: “This is the PM embracing him with open arms, celebrating his victory.”

While some Murdoch associates credit his renewed vigour to the 84-year-old’s new relationship with the former model Jerry Hall, who will also attend the drinks party, the chief reason appears to be a sort of corporate annus mirabilis for Murdoch.

At the start of 2015, the head of the company that controls more than a third of British newspaper assets, as well as 40% of Sky, still faced the possibility of corporate charges on both sides of the Atlantic, while many of his employees faced criminal charges for paying public officials.



While nine journalists were convicted over hacking, none where convicted over corrupt payments to public officials, and Murdoch has seen corporate charges dropped on both sides of the Atlantic.

He has also put Brooks back in charge of his British newspapers despite initial reports in the Guardian being met with disbelief. Having returned to the top job in September, Brooks did not go to any of the main political party conferences and is only now ready to get “reacquainted” with people, according to company insiders.

After splitting the two arms of his media empire into a film/television and publishing businesses, ostensibly to prevent the phone hacking scandal tarnishing his more lucrative 21st Century Fox franchise, Murdoch has watched as both companies have grown in value on the stock exchange. He has also elevated both of his sons, Lachlan and James, into the top jobs at each company over the past year.

Even the decision to close the 168-year-old News of the World has resulted in a far cheaper seven-day operation for the Sun, which, though facing an advertising and circulation decline, is still the UK’s biggest selling tabloid.

He may have spent $500m (£336m) on settling hacking claims, closed a national newspaper and lost several of his staff but, after four years, Rupert Murdoch appears to have emerged a winner.

He is rumoured to be considering a returned offer for the whole of Sky he does not own but his interest in Time Warner, the US media giant behind the Harry Potter films and the CNN news network, suggests he may now have far bigger fish to fry.

For some, Cameron still has questions to ask, of course. The government has indicated that it will not officially axe plans for a Leveson part 2 on police corruption until all criminal cases are complete. With phone hacking victims lodging an appeal last week, the cases may drag on.

Evan Harris, executive director of campaign group Hacked Off, said that Cameron has yet to implement Leveson’s “modest recommendations” about disclosing the details of his meetings with media executives despite telling the Leveson inquiry “that the relationship between ministers and editors/proprietors was too close for the good of the country”. “Until he does so,” he added, “his relationship with the house of Murdoch will continue to reek of sleaze.”

With the upper echelons of the Conservative party – George Osborne and Michael Gove as well as Cameron – all more vocal supporters of the Murdochs than the current leadership of the Labour party or Liberal Democrats, Murdoch’s views on Europe, press regulation and more besides is expected to be listened to more intently than it was during the years of the coalition.

Later this week, Murdoch is also due to attend what is believed to be his first British pantomime alongside Hall, who starred in last year’s production at Richmond Theatre. When told “he’s behind you”, Murdoch could be forgiven for thinking that the traditional phrase could be used to describe the prime minister’s relationship to him.