Among the many things that Tony Blair vowed to change when he became Labour's leader in 1994 was the relationship between the party and most of the national press. Mr Blair believed that downmarket newspapers had destroyed Neil Kin-nock, the Labour leader who narrowly lost in the general election in 1992, and he was determined that the same should not happen to him. By convincing editors and owners that he was a winner who threatened neither their commercial interests nor the interests of their readers, he succeeded for a time. But 11 years on, as the newspapers prepare to make their election endorsements, he has lost the approbation he so assiduously sought. Mr Blair's almost frenzied courtship of newspaper executives is one of the main themes of the recently published diaries of Piers Morgan, the Daily Mirror editor who was fired last year after he published faked pictures of British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. Mr Morgan calculates that in his ten years as a tabloid editor he had "22 lunches, six dinners, six interviews, 24 further one-to-one chats over tea and biscuits, and numerous phone calls" with or from Mr Blair.
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