Alastair Campbell, a former spin doctor for Tony Blair, claims Rupert Murdoch pressed the Prime Minister over the timing of the war and pledged the support of News International. In the last instalment of his diaries, Mr Campbell discloses that the chairman and CEO of News Corporation made a telephone call warning about the dangers of delaying Britain's involvement.
He writes: ''Both TB [Tony Blair] and I felt it was prompted by Washington, and another example of their over-crude diplomacy. Murdoch was pushing all the Republican buttons, how the longer we waited the harder it got.'' The next day, he claims, Mr Blair felt the conversation was "odd, not very clever.'' Mr Murdoch has previously told the Levisohn Inquiry into media ethics that he has "'never asked a prime minister for anything''.