If Rupert Murdoch was not a suitable person in 2011 to run a television company, nothing since has made him more so, as he renews his failed bid to take over the other 61% of Sky. Last time a unanimous Commons vote stopped him, after then culture secretary Jeremy Hunt’s office was exposed for backroom dealings with Murdoch’s people. Now we wait to see whether the current culture secretary, Karen Bradley, will refer the bid to Ofcom, the regulator with power to prevent over-mighty media conglomerations.

Murdoch’s “most humble day of my life” was just that – only for one day. Rebekah Brooks is back in charge of News UK, to hell with the victims of hacking and other outrages in papers she oversaw. Found not guilty of complicity in industrial-scale abuse of privacy and destruction of lives, the only conclusion is that she is the most incompetent executive ever to be re-employed, after recklessly paying out mountainous expenses for unknown purposes. She lost the company £300m and hundreds of jobs, took a £16m payoff and now is back, while some colleagues went to jail. The News of the World has returned as the Sun on Sunday.

Murdoch’s £11.2bn bid was sneaked out to the stock exchange late on Friday, with parliament empty and MPs on trains (if they could find one) to their constituencies. News management is his business. So is management of politicians and regulators worldwide. He has shuffled his companies so that News UK, running his Times, Sunday Times, Sun and Sunday Sun empire, accounting for 40% of newspaper readership, is separated from 21st Century Fox. But as they are all run by his family, the regulator should surely regard them as one.

Murdoch’s bid seizes Sky on the cheap, after the plunge in the pound due to the Brexit vote. How apt. It’s probable that had Murdoch never thundered into the UK to dominate its media, the referendum might never have happened. Had he never launched the toxic-toned Fox News in the US, Donald Trump might not be president-elect. The “great man” theory of history has its limits, but Murdoch’s malign global influence is an extraordinary example of the power of one great villain.

Asked why he has been, from the very start, so vehemently set against the EU, Murdoch famously replied: “When I go into Downing Street, they do what I say; when I go to Brussels, they take no notice.” The reason he needs “notice” is that the success of his empire has relied on avoiding tax and regulation by using his bully-pulpit to frighten politicians into acquiescence. It works. He could only launch Sky because Margaret Thatcher persuaded the EU to change laws on content.

Past prime ministers know his power: it was good to see Gordon Brown weigh in yesterday with a letter to the culture secretary demanding the takeover be delayed until after the second part of the Leveson inquiry is carried out into corruption of the police and officials at Murdoch-owned newspapers. It’s feared Bradley will never trigger Leveson 2.

John Major in his autobiography said he knew he was a dead man walking as soon as Murdoch gave him the thumbs down. Eager to assuage his wrath, he passed the 1996 Broadcasting Act to gift Murdoch the digital universe, and Tony Blair’s opposition just as eagerly voted for it. How cravenly Blair kowtowed in the run-up to 1997 and after. David Cameron, in the run-up to his 2010 election, shockingly announced he would abolish Ofcom, when it broke up Sky’s monopolistic control of football and movies. Then he brought Murdoch’s Andy Coulson into the heart of government.

During Theresa May’s 36-hour “flying” visit to New York in September, she found time to call on Murdoch. It would not be wild to guess they discussed Brexit, his newspapers’ coverage of any EU treaty she strikes – and his desire to take over Sky. A deal? We shall see. And would he keep to his side of any bargain?

The response to 21st Century Fox taking over Sky has been alarmingly muted, so far – though Tom Watson and Ed Miliband put up a spirited Commons objection. There is a rhythm to news stories, a time and tide Murdoch well understands: hacking Milly Dowler’s phone was beyond shocking, but that is yesterday’s news.

Maybe post-Trump, there is a listless acceptance that the world and its media will forever be dominated by corrupt business interests, fake news, climate denying, science denying, truth-devoid, fact-free emoto-news. The truth is what people can be made to feel it is, stirred by rampant fears and hatreds. Tolerance, balance, moderation, empathy with “others”, these are above all dull. They just don’t entertain.

If Fox does take over the heavily loss-making Sky News, the pressure will be to Foxify it, to turn it into a rightist views station not a news station. Already you can hear that drum beat from some people who should know better, not necessarily of the Murdoch right, suggesting that British rules for strict broadcasting neutrality make broadcast news too dull. The new media world of the internet, awash with vitriolic opinion, hot with argument, makes UK broadcasters look lame. Both sides complained bitterly about the BBC’s referendum coverage, seeing bias everywhere, resulting in a painfully cautious on-the-one-hand-the-earth-is-flat, on-the-other-hand-it’s-round, too early to tell approach. Letting Fox own Sky will start the campaign to undermine the very notion of impartiality and accuracy. We should never let our impartiality rules go: they make BBC news the most trusted around the world.

The BBC-wrecking Murdoch press was sinisterly quiet during the BBC charter negotiations, knowing that in the then culture secretary John Whittingdale, they had their man. He ripped £700m from the heart of the BBC by obliging it to take on the cost of free TV licences for over-75s by 2020. In the list of six candidates to chair the BBC’s new, more powerful unitary board, appears William Shawcross, author of an admiring biography of Rupert Murdoch. His record of failing to defend the campaigning voice of charities as chair of the charity commission should send a chill down the spine of BBC supporters.

The culture secretary has to decide whether to trigger Leveson 2, and whether to refer the Murdoch bid to Ofcom. As was raised in shadow cabinet, here’s a prime target for Jeremy Corbyn – if nothing else, a man above suspicion – to call out any sign of yet more corruption of a UK government by this media thug. So let’s see him fight this corner on behalf of May’s “everyone”.