Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has registered gifts worth £8,177 covering travel and accommodation for a meeting with media mogul Rupert Murdoch in Greece. Badenoch, along with her husband Hamish and shadow minister Alex Burghart, were flown to Athens on 24 August – with the costs paid for by the Murdoch family’s News Corp UK organisation. Badenoch’s spokesperson said: “Kemi was pleased to meet Rupert Murdoch and senior News Corp and News UK executives. “The visit has been declared in full in the usual way.” The spokesperson added: “Kemi values serious engagement with Britain’s major media organisations and the people who run them (including at the BBC) and will continue to make the case for a free and independent press.” The figures were published, external in the latest register of members’ financial interests, in which MPs must report gifts worth more than £300 within 28 days of receipt.
In the latest list, Prime Minister Andy Burnham registered three tickets worth £677.34 for seats in the directors’ lounge at Everton’s first game of the Premier League season. In the record of her meeting with Murdoch, Badenoch lists the following gifts for her and her husband from News Corp UK: An outbound flight from Rome to Athens and a return flight to London, amounting to an estimated value of £4,000 Ground transportation and transfers costing £1,752.50 She describes the purpose of the visit as an “off-site meetings with Mr K R Murdoch and other senior executives from News Corp and News UK”. Burghart, the Conservative shadow Northern Ireland secretary, also attended the meeting and has registered a gift of £4,088.97, covering flights, accommodation and transportation. The meeting took place shortly after Badenoch met Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni in Italy.
Badenoch previously met Murdoch, along with other News Corp executives in 2022, when she was an international trade minister. Murdoch stepped down as News Corp chair in 2023 transitioning to the role of chairman emeritus. His son Lachlan became chair of the company, which owns UK media organisations including Virgin Radio, TalkSPORT, and the newspapers the Sun and the Times. UK politicians over the years have sought to develop good relationships with Murdoch and in 2011 Labour’s Tony Blair became godfather to his daughter.
Murdoch’s publications have switched political allegiances throughout the decades, backing the Conservatives in the 1980s and early 90s and switching to Labour in 1997, before returning to the Conservatives in 2010. In 2024, the Times, Sunday Times and the Sun endorsed Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. Murdochs reach deal in succession battle over media empire
