Rupert Murdoch likes to back a winner. So what’s he doing cosying up to Nigel Farage?

This is tactical posturing designed to petrify the Tories

Nigel Farage and Rupert Murdoch met last week while the Ukip leader was in the US (Reuters/Getty)

With nothing more to occupy his mind than possible air strikes against IS, Douglas Carswell’s defection, and the increasing prospect that next week he will become the first Conservative and Unionist Party leader to preside over the disintegration of the union, what a stroke of luck that David Cameron has so little to worry about at the minute.

Were things going one iota less smoothly for the Prime Minister, he might not have the energy to concern himself with Nigel Farage’s cosy little pow-wow with Rupert Murdoch in New York last week. Nigel has since tweeted that “we had a good chat” and that “this is an 83-year-old guy whose finger is firmly on the pulse of what is happening in British and world poltics” - an anlysis Davros swiftly confirmed by referring in a tweet of his own to the Labour leader as “Milliband”.

Beyond that vague hint that the meeting went well, all is mystery, and into the void floods an obvious question. Various headlines ask whether the lovable scamp might switch The Sun’s support to Nigel’s merry band, though this is not a wholly original notion. When it was raised here in April, 2010, it was introduced with the rider: “Here’s one to file under the header of Idiotic Predictions Not Worth a Second Thought …”

In almost half a century, after all, Murdoch has never once put a title behind any party other than the one almost guaranteed to win. On this basis, the idea of him using his most distempered attack dog to back a party with no chance of taking more than a handful of seats does seem idiotic, and the flirting with Farage is tactical posturing designed to petrify the Tories.

It would be crazy to imagine for what Rupert would spell as a milisecond that he has abandoned his dream of taking a 100 per cent stake in BSkyB. The sweetheart never gives up on a deal, and this one remains his unholy grail. Since losing The Sun would be a cataclysm for Mr Cameron second only to losing Scotland, you have to wonder what post-election promise to Murdoch - filtered through back channels in the preferred style of governments negotiating with terrorists - he would not make in the quest to retain it.

In the real world?

The purple menace of Ukip creates a pageant of headless chickenry on the Tory back benches. Writing in the Mail on Sunday, presumably with Nanny’s permission, Jacob Rees-Mogg offers David Cameron the advice to make Nigel Farage deputy PM after winning the general election with a Conservative-Ukip pact.

Also firmly rooted in the real world is Adam Afriye, whose nanny-related man of the people credentials may be even stronger than Jacob’s. You may recall the interview in which Adam - a future leadership contender, if solely in his own fecund imagination - revealed that the family head for his Windsor mansion each Friday “when our whole entourage of nannies and helpers transfer.”

Whether or not he is in league with young Moggy, the same Mail on Sunday reports that Adam promises to lead a delegation to No 10 to demand a pact with Ukip. We respectfully suggest that he takes the whole entourage, and possibly Jacob’s nanny, with him on this massively important mission. A delegation loses much of its transformative power when it is a delegation of one.

Watchful minders wanted

With the Better Together campaign having competed its velvety transition from smugness to mild complancency to slight concern to fretfulness to sheer blind panic, the nuclear missile in its arsenal is finally deployed. Gordon Brown is unleashed in defence of the union, and begins in the determinedly untribalist fashion that was his political calling card for so long by using a Sunday Mirror piece to blame the tightening of the polls entirely on the Tories.

If this bold Send-In-The-Brown statagem extends beyond a few public meetings to a whirlwind meet-the-punters national tour, please God he has some watchful minders with him at all times. Somewhere on the streets of Dundee, Aberdeen or Inverness will be lurking a Mrs Gillian MacDuffy, and the former prime minister’s lapels must be ceaselessly examined for live microphones.

We wish him well with his efforts despite the irony inherent in them. His eschewing of the Commons during this parliament in favour of remaining at home suggests that the Ian Smith of Kircaldy declared unilateral independence from Westminster more than four years ago.

Billy Boy Hague

William Hague’s semi-retirement from politics frees time for the erstwhile Foreign Secretary to chat with the Times, and to complete one of those diverting little questionnaires. After such confessions as a preference for Yorkshire tea over soya latte (though he captivatingly adds, “I don’t drink much caffeine”), he was invited to choose between Helen Mirren and Angelina Jolie. The answer will shock you to the verge of the ague. “Angelina Jolie,” he replied. “She’s a friend of mine.” No, really? The one-time missus of Billy Bob Thornton is now a chum of Billy Boy Hague? How on earth did the reticent scamp surpress the natural urge to brag about that connection for so long?

Objections ignored

Tremendous news from the the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, whose chief executive announces that the annual pay of our excellent MPs will shortly rise - despite the objections of 99.9999997 of the public and all three main party leaders - by a gratifyingly modest 10per cent. The man in question, who appreciates that the electorate will give his decision the bird, adds a new notch on the bedpost of nominative determinism. His name is Marcial Boo. Who knew?