Party at magnate’s London flat saw half the Tory cabinet and Rebekah Brooks in attendance and marks Murdoch’s return to the centre of political power

David Cameron was joined by George Osborne at Rupert Murdoch’s Christmas house party on Monday night, an event where half the Conservative cabinet went to toast the media magnate.

John Whittingdale, the culture secretary, whose job it is to regulate the media industry, and Priti Patel, the employment minister who attends cabinet meetings, were among the other ministers present at a gathering with rightwing columnists and Jerry Hall, the former model and new partner of the 84-year-old media patriarch.

Rebekah Brooks was the most senior News Corp UK executive in attendance, alongside the group’s national newspaper editors John Witherow, Tony Gallagher and Martin Ivens in what is understood to be her first chance to raise a glass with the prime minister since being reappointed as chief executive in September.



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Although Murdoch has retained personal links to Osborne and other members of the cabinet, the media mogul is understood to have been particularly hostile to Cameron because of the prime minister’s decision to launch the Leveson inquiry into the media in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal.

Two former journalists who have proved Murdoch’s most vociferous supporters in government – Boris Johnson and Michael Gove – were both understood to be out of London: “Otherwise they wouldn’t have turned down the invitation of the year,” sniffed one News Corp insider of the boss’s bash.



Unassuming from the outside, despite its location between the Ritz hotel and St James’s Palace in London, Murdoch’s flat has a large balcony overlooking Green Park. It isn’t known if the prime minister, who has admitted to his struggle to give up smoking in the past, was among those going outside for a sneaky drag.

By 9pm, a party which started three hours earlier had started to wind down and several ministers, including Cameron and Osborne, headed to the Conservative Christmas party being held at the Sexy Fish restaurant in Mayfair.

Murdoch’s early-evening gathering is the first to be attended by such political big beasts since the mogul’s huge Kensington Palace party in June 2011. Then Labour leader Ed Miliband and many of his shadow team joined Cameron in full public view before the most devastating of revelations about phone hacking emerged.

This year’s party, held at night and at home, may have been smaller but it marks Murdoch’s return to the centre of power more than almost anything else, the culmination of the process that has seen him regain his position at the top of British life.