{"id":201465,"date":"2020-01-26T12:39:41","date_gmt":"2020-01-26T12:39:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=201465"},"modified":"2020-01-28T08:10:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-28T08:10:00","slug":"blairs-secret-rendezvous-with-murdochs-wife-led-to-divorce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=201465","title":{"rendered":"Blair\u2019s secret rendezvous with Murdoch\u2019s wife led to divorce"},"content":{"rendered":"

New English Times \u2013 Nov 13, 2018<\/a><\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Left to right: Tony Blair, Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Though Blair spent most of his time jetting around Africa and the Middle East after leaving office, he made sure he kept up with Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire owner of the News Corporation media group.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2011, the two men met in America \u2014 not long after Murdoch took the decision to close the News of the World. Afterwards, Blair teamed up with the tycoon\u2019s wife, Wendi Deng, to make business trips to her native China. His overtures to the Chinese \u2014 to become an adviser to one of the country\u2019s sovereign wealth funds \u2014 fell on stony ground. But he grew close to Deng.<\/span><\/p>\n

The following year, he visited the attractive 43-year-old twice at her husband\u2019s London home. Then, that August, he was spotted alone with her at a Mayfair club.<\/span><\/p>\n

Deng was clearly smitten. In an email to herself around that time, she wrote of Blair\u2019s loyal aide, Catherine Rimmer: \u2018Katherine [sic] Rimmer does not like me because she does not want Tony gets [sic] in trouble with me.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Next, Blair few out to see Deng at Murdoch\u2019s 1,000-acre home near Carmel in California.<\/span><\/p>\n

She told her husband nothing about Blair\u2019s visit; instead she said that she was staying at the ranch with a girlfriend.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, her friend had already left when the former Prime Minister arrived, and Deng had also told some of her staff to make themselves scarce \u2014 while Blair\u2019s protection officers were quartered in a nearby hotel.<\/span><\/p>\n

On June 11, 2013, Murdoch and his wife hosted a dinner for a group of friends and visitors from London.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unknown to his guests, and especially to his wife, he had already decided to file for a divorce the following day.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was not a spur of the moment decision. Murdoch had been growing weary of his wife\u2019s sharp tongue, her frequent absence at parties and on foreign trips, and the endless visits of her Chinese friends.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her habit of speaking Chinese in his presence was particularly irksome. Their 14-year marriage, he decided, had run its course.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there was another reason he\u2019d had enough. While the Metropolitan Police were investigating phone-hacking practices at the News of the World, Murdoch\u2019s team had sifted through millions of emails on his company computers.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the course of this, emails from Deng were uncovered that suggested a close relationship with a tennis coach in Carmel, another with the founder of Google, Eric Schmidt \u2014 and a third with Tony Blair. It was left to one of Murdoch\u2019s sons to show the messages to the ageing tycoon.<\/span><\/p>\n

They made for unedifying reading. In one memo to herself, Deng had written: \u2018Oh s***, oh s***. Whatever why I\u2019m so so missing Tony. Because he is so charming and his clothes are so good.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018He has such a good body and he had his really, really good legs Butt [sic] . . . and he is slim tall and good skin. Pierce blue eyes which I love. Love his eyes. Also I love his power on the stage . . . and what else what else what else . . .\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Other messages suggested that Blair had met Deng in New York, London and Beijing.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Murdoch, he then quizzed his servants in Carmel and learned that Blair had stayed overnight on April 27, 2013. Yet Blair had met him the following day in Los Angeles \u2014 to ask for money for his Faith Foundation \u2014 and hadn\u2019t mentioned staying at the ranch or seeing Deng.<\/span><\/p>\n

Murdoch\u2019s staff told him the rest: during their meals, the couple had been seen feeding each other, and Blair had also been spotted joining Deng in her bedroom and closing the door.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hours after the divorce was announced, Blair telephoned Murdoch, insisting he was innocent. But, after a brief conversation, the tycoon refused to take any more of his calls.<\/span><\/p>\n

Blair nevertheless spoke regularly with Deng on the phone. With Cherie\u2019s support, both he and Deng publicly denied there had ever been an affair. No one could definitively prove that there had \u2014 but Murdoch ridiculed Blair\u2019s denials. And there can be no doubt that the former PM was damaged by global interest in the scandal.<\/span><\/p>\n

For six years, he had cultivated an image as a respected globe-trotting statesman, but this business with Deng shocked some of his associates. Particularly appalled was an American billionaire, Tim Collins, who was not only on the board of Blair\u2019s Faith Foundation but had also given it considerable sums of money.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018The Wendi Murdoch affair put me off,\u2019 he recalled. \u2018The real man was revealed. He\u2019s incapable of self-criticism. I felt so na\u00efve.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Collins duly withdrew his support from the Foundation. The row also fuelled the end of Blair\u2019s role as Middle East peace envoy.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  • Adapted from Broken Vows: Tony Blair \u2014 The Tragedy Of Power by Tom Bower<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    For years Rupert Murdoch\u2019s newspapers had supported Tony Blair. But unbeknown to Murdoch, Tony Blair and Wendi Deng, Murdoch\u2019s wife, were having an affair <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Miscellaneous"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=201465"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201470,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201465\/revisions\/201470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=201465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=201465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=201465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}