Vince Cable: I declared war on Murdoch... now everyone agrees with me

Vince Cable today says there is "a big case to answer" about whether Rupert Murdoch is fit and proper to keep his stake in broadcaster BSkyB.

In an interview with the Evening Standard, the Business Secretary also reveals for the first time that he considered resigning from Cabinet during the furore when he said he was "at war" with the media tycoon.

"I certainly felt rather low at the time because I was heavily criticised," he said at the end of a week that has seen the tables comprehensively turned between the two men.

"And I had broken the strict procedures that I could not discuss this [the BSkyB takeover bid] with other people, even though I thought it was a private conversation. So it was very awkward and there were queues of journalists outside my house for days on end.

"But I was persuaded to stick in there by family and various colleagues and I'm glad I did."
The furore broke when the Daily Telegraph secretly taped him telling an undercover reporter whom he thought was a Twickenham constituent, "I have declared war on Mr Murdoch and I think we are going to win". Mr Cable was at the time in charge of media regulation, including the £8 billion BSkyB bid.

He was humiliatingly rebuked by David Cameron and responsibility for media policy plus some 60 civil servants were all handed to Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, a Tory who admired Mr Murdoch.

Today, however, Mr Cable feels vindicated. His spirits fully recovered, he joked of being "delighted to discover that everyone in Britain and the House of Commons now agrees with me".

Earlier, he had likened the anti-Murdoch fever to "the end of a dictatorship, when everybody suddenly discovers they were against the
dictator".

Asked if he thinks Mr Murdoch was a "fit and proper" person to own the 39 per cent of BSkyB he already has, the minister said: "There's certainly a big case to answer. I don't know whether they pass that or not, it's for Ofcom to decide."

But for his actions last year in referring the takeover to Ofcom, he said, it would have been "waved through" by now.

"There was very strong advice in Whitehall and outside that I had no basis for referring this," he revealed. "But I took independent advice which did suggest a serious plurality issue - and on the strength of that I referred it to Ofcom, who in turn said it should go to the Competition Commission. Had I not done that we would now be dealing with a fait accompli."

The effect, he said, would have been a "very high concentration" of media in one man's hands "that was potentially very unhealthy".

"There would have been a great deal of cross-promotion," he said. "As a result the group would have been much stronger than the sum of its parts and real plurality and choice would have been seriously threatened."

Mr Cable says he is "not into empire building" and does not want his old powers over media regulation back.

However, he is amused with a suggestion that perhaps a Lib-Dem minister in the Coalition should be responsible in future because they are the only party untainted by close association with the Murdoch empire.

"The Lib-Dems have gone out on a limb in the past to be independent, sometimes criticising proprietors like Mr Murdoch, and we've been caned in the media for it. We do collectively feel vindicated for it."

He thinks it "fairly obvious" that Rebekah Brooks was right to resign over the phone hacking scandal but that Mr Murdoch, whom he has never met, is ultimately to blame for what went wrong.

"Clearly as the primary owner the responsibility rests with him. I'm not trying to run the guy down. I think he is probably big enough to accept it's his responsibility."

Labour leader Ed Miliband "has had a good two weeks" he said but said the real test was just beginning: "I think what will now matter is which of the parties will have the courage to go ahead with the radical reforms that are going to be required to the oversight of the press, the competition rules and the concentration of ownership."