A dominatrix’s sensational story of sex, cocaine and tabloid wrongdoing has revived questions over the relationship between News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch’s scandal-hungry News of the World and British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.
Former escort boss Natalie Rowe, in a television interview aired late on Monday, said the tabloid deliberately twisted her claims that she and the Conservative Party politician used to snort cocaine together years ago so that Osborne was not tainted in the scandal.
The idea that Osborne — now one of the country’s most powerful politicians — could have been deliberately cast in a sympathetic light by a Murdoch paper has raised new questions about whether the now-defunct tabloid was playing favorites with its political exposes.
It also highlights the cozy ties between British politicians and the Murdoch press that British Prime Minister David Cameron has vowed to cut. Osborne was the key Conservative to recommend that Murdoch executive Andy Coulson, a former News of the World editor, become Cameron’s top communications aide.
The story begins with Rowe’s 2005 claim that she and Osborne used to snort cocaine together years ago. At the time, it was exactly the kind of story the brash News of the World loved — a mix of sex, politics and drugs — and even came with a picture of the youthful pair that the tabloid said showed them arm-in-arm with a white substance in front of them.
However, while the News of the World trumpeted the story across its front page, it took an unusually forgiving approach to Osborne, who at the time was managing Cameron’s bid to become leader of the British Conservatives.
Rowe now says that News of the World reporters stole her story, which she was hoping to sell to a rival newspaper, and deliberately twisted the facts to make Osborne look better.
In an interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp television, she accused the Murdoch tabloid of making her seem unreliable so as to undermine allegations against a man who now holds one of the most senior positions in the British government.
“They stole the story and then they didn’t even tell it as it should have been told,” Rowe said, according to a transcript of the interview. “They completely diluted it and made it look like I was not to be trusted ... and all for George Osborne.”
Rowe’s claims that she, Osborne and his well-heeled friends indulged in cocaine together at parties are long-standing and have been repeatedly denied by the 40-year-old Osborne.
In her interview, Rowe says that she was hoping to publish her allegations in the Sunday Mirror, which put out a story entitled “I snorted cocaine with top Tory boy” on Oct. 16, 2005.
However, the News of the World — under circumstances which remain unclear — got a hold of the story at the same time, running it under a less explicit headline: “Top Tory, coke and the hooker.”
In an unsigned editorial published alongside the story, the News of the World said that Osborne “has now owned up to his encounters with a cocaine-snorting call-girl. And robustly condemns drugs for the destruction they wreak.”
The paper said that it had previously predicted that the Tory leadership was “Cameron’s for the taking,” adding: “Nothing published since then has made us change our mind.”
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