The classic Chinese text, The Art of War, always has something to say about Rupert Murdoch's activities, so much so that you wonder if the Sun king is actually channelling the wisdom of Sun Tzu, specifically the advice that a commander is more likely to gain victory by watching for the enemy's weakness than through his own strength.

This is what Sun Tzu says: "The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy. To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself."

Two short-lived Murdoch challengers – Robert Maxwell and Conrad Black – demonstrate the point. Through their own actions, one ended up a broken suicide and the other a jailbird. Last week, two of Murdoch's fiercest commercial and political foes – the Daily Telegraph and Vince Cable – unwittingly combined to hand him the perfect seasonal gift – the merger of BSkyB and News International, which, after so much opposition, now seems certain to go through. What is so beautiful for the Murdoch family is that neither Rupert nor son James moved a muscle to annihilate the business secretary or the numbskulls in charge of strategy at the Daily Telegraph.Murdoch's enemies simply behaved as themselves, guided by innate weaknesses – in Cable's case an unworldly hubris and in the Telegraph's an addiction to political assassination.

The story of the scorpion and the frog comes to mind. The scorpion persuades the frog to carry him across a swollen river. Halfway across, the scorpion fatally stings the frog so that they are both doomed. Before they die, the frog asks why. The scorpion replies that it was merely obeying its nature. The Telegraph is the scorpion, Cable is the trusting and foolish frog and Murdoch is the river.

Even sweeter for News International was the opportunity to issue a statement expressing "shock and dismay" and raising questions about "fairness and due process", as though these were the essence of Rupert Murdoch's business career over the last half-century. I will come on to this later, but first it must be said that Murdoch was wronged and although we all know that decisions like the one to refer the merger of BSkyB and News International to the Competition Commission are never entirely sanitised, it was unacceptable for the minister in charge to prejudge the issue in the presence of a couple of strangers, however seductively attentive to his Lear-like ramblings.

Just as News International executives were moaning in collective ecstasy at all of this, they were then told that the decision on the merger would now be taken by the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, who, as it happens, has just been publicly insulted by James Naughtie and Andrew Marr, two employees of the BBC which, of course, is another opponent of the merger.

The cards could not have fallen better for Murdoch, except there is now a static field around the deal and the independence of Jeremy Hunt, a man who wears the smirk of a serial canary swallower, has been called into question.

Where Cable would make war against Murdoch for all the right reasons, Hunt is likely to make love and for all the wrong reasons. His website carries an interview in which he says: "What we should recognise is that he has probably done more to create variety and choice in British TV than any other single person. We would be the poorer and wouldn't be saying that British TV is the envy of the world if it hadn't been for him being prepared to take that commercial risk." Since taking office, he has held un-minuted meetings with James Murdoch and BSkyB's chief executive Jeremy Darroch, which is hardly an encouraging sign.

There are obviously greater calls on our attention at the moment – the suppression of writers, actors and political opposition following rigged elections in Belarus, for example, or the new laws in democratic Hungary which will monitor and penalise the media – but if this deal goes through it is likely to reduce the diversity of the media in Britain and will consolidate Murdoch's power over the British political establishment.

So the deal is very important, which is why we must test the Murdoch strategy of "putting himself beyond the possibility of defeat" and waiting for others to make mistakes. It is not good enough to give a foreign businessman, who does not pay taxes here, the enhanced power that will result in the merger simply because he wants it. Perhaps it's time formally to examine his fitness as well as his loyalty to the "fairness and due process" that his employees cited last week. Can he be trusted with this enormous power? While Vince Cable has been found guilty of bringing unfair prejudice to bear on Rupert Murdoch's commercial interests, is it not true that Murdoch's commercial power distorts the political process with much greater force than anything poor Dr Cable managed?

Nowhere is there a better example of the corrosive effects of Murdoch's power than in the phone hacking scandal, which still continues to throw up revelations and hardly shows News International to be the champion of "fairness and due process". If it were, Rebekah Brooks, News International's chief executive, would have answered the summons to attend a parliamentary hearing into the matter and News International would not have bought off claimants whose phones were hacked, or have pursued a policy which involved paying police officers for information on the same police force that was charged with investigating the claims of widespread criminality in the News of the World.

Two weeks ago, papers were released by the high court which seem to suggest that the hacking of phones belonging to the actors Jude law and Sienna Miller by the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire was part of a much wider scheme to use "electronic intelligence and eavesdropping", with the knowledge of senior editorial executives. The document implies that the News of the World carried out illegal surveillance covering "political, royal and showbiz/entertainment" matters. Some 20 separate public figures are in the early stages of suing the News of the World.

These outstanding matters are very serious and it is only sensible that they are openly and satisfactorily resolved before we hand Murdoch's company the complete set of keys to the city gates.