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Kemi Badenoch was gifted an £8,177 trip from News Corp to meet Rupert Murdoch and other senior executives in Greece over the summer.
The Conservative Party leader has just reported a donation-in-kind for the summer jaunt with the Murdochs worth thousands.
The trip was marked as “international visit to Greece between 24 August 2026 and 26 August 2026” for “attending off-site meetings with Mr Rupert Murdoch and other senior executives from News Corp and News UK,” according to her latest Register of Interests.
Alex Burghart, Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party and Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, also recorded a trip paid for by the Murdoch media empire worth £4,088, covering the same dates as Kemi Badenoch but in Italy.
He said it was an “international visit to Italy between 24 August 2026 and 26 August 2026” for “off-site meetings with Mr K R [Keith Rupert, his full name] Murdoch and other senior executives from News Corp and News UK.”
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The two filings reveal Rupert Murdoch was travelling around Europe in late August, meeting Kemi Badenoch and her deputy in Greece and Italy. It is not known what they discussed.
The Murdochs appear to be moving back towards the Conservatives following a flirtation with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Politico reported in 2023 that Kemi Badenoch “held clandestine talks with media mogul Rupert Murdoch within days of joining the U.K. Cabinet, then failed to declare it in transparency data.”
“Murdoch, who stepped down this month as chairman of Fox and News Corp but retains a hugely powerful role at the media empire, questioned Badenoch for 20 minutes in an atmosphere described as akin to a job interview by one of those in attendance,” the outlet reported.
It is not clear what Badenoch and Burghart discussed at their respective overseas trips with the owners of The Sun, The Times and the Sunday Times, but the spending suggests News Corp is keen to keep the Conservatives close.
Don’t miss a story
The issue is not confined to the Conservatives. One of Keir Starmer’s last social events as Prime Minister was a News Corp summer party with Rupert-heir Lachlan Murdoch. The Sun reluctantly supported Labour at the last moment before the 2024 General Election, and Starmer went on to appoint a former Sun executive, David Dinsmore, to a top communications role.
In 2024, Byline Times revealed that Labour failed to deny reports that Starmer made a secret pre-election deal with News UK not to complete the Leveson inquiry into the conduct of the British press, in exchange for an endorsement from Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers.
Liz Pendleton, co-founder of the campaign group Media Revolution, told Byline Times: “Probably the most concerning thing about the ‘gifts’ from Murdoch to Badenoch and Burghart is that it’s not even vaguely surprising…
“Our entire democracy has long been completely compromised by media owners – Murdoch is just one of many.”
She added: “Without genuinely independent regulation of the press and social media, there will be yet more victims at their hands, and our politics will remain captured by narrative hacks.”
Kemi Badenoch, Alex Burghart and the Conservatives were contacted for comment.
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