Tony Blair at the Leveson inquiry 11.45am: Leveson puts it to Blair that the Hayman island trip was part of a "charm offensive." He admits the trip was a "very deliberate and very strategic" attempt to win the support of Murdoch's titiles. My minimum objective was to try stop them tearing us to pieces. My maximum objective was to try get their support. He adds that it was "revolutionary" for Labour to be given a fair hearing by the Sun and Times in this period. 11.45am: Keating also apparently told Blair that you could do deals with Murdoch without saying a deal had been done. Blair says: There was no deal on issues to do with the media ... and to be fair he never sought such a thing. He adds that he did not buy the strength of Keating's comments. 11.41am: Blair is asked about his 1995 trip to Murdoch's News Corp conference at Hayman Island in Australia. Paul Keating, the former prime minister of Australia, apparently told Blair: He's a big bad bastard, and the only way you can deal with him is to make sure he thinks you can be a big bad bastard too. You can do deals with him, without ever saying a deal is done. But the only thing he cares about is his business and the only language he respects is strength. Blair says he "does not buy the crudeness" of this, but it sounds like something Keating would have said. 11.34am: The inquiry has resumed and Jay returns to Chris Mullin's diaries and its account of a meeting with Blair in November 1994. Blair is quoted as telling Mullin: "My absolutely priority is to win. I know it sounds unprincipled but I believe it's my role in life. Jay asks if Blair mighty you have said that. "Yep, sounds like something I would have said," replies Blair, to laughter in the press gallery. Blair says if the Sun had treat him as they did Neil Kinnock in 1992 he would have responded robustly. 11.3am: Here is a brief summary of Blair's evidence so far: Tony Blair said taking on the press as prime minister would have led to an "absolute major confrontation" lasting years. Blair attacked the Daily Mail for its "huge and sustained" criticism. He said there was "nothing odd" about three phone calls to Rupert Murdoch days before the Iraq war. 11.32am: Paul Waugh of PoliticsHome has just tweeted: 11.31am: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted: 11.27am: The Guardian's Esther Addley has just tweeted: 11.25am: The inquiry is now taking a short break. 11.24am: Leveson remarks on Blair's evidence that Murdoch appears to be in an "incredibly powerful position." Blair agrees Murdoch does have a "substantial power," but it is not confined to his newspapers. If you look at those main media blocs, of which Murdoch's are most powerful but others are powerful as well, yes you have to take that into account with your strategy. Blair admits his government was guilty of ascribing too much power to the media. 11.23am: Jay turns to former Labour MP Chris Mullin's diaries. Blair says Murdoch's personal political views are "equal first" to his apparent penchant for "backing the winner." 11.20am: By later in his premiership, Blair says, he had give up on the Mail, wasn't much in touch with the Express, and was in touch with the Guardian and Observer. Of News International, he says he tended to associate more with those who gave him a "fair shot at it." He describes other media groups as "a closed book to us." 11.16am: Dan Sabbagh continues: 11.14am: Blair is asked about the runup to the Iraq war in 2003. His three phone calls with Murdoch on 11, 13 and 19 March 2003 are listed. He has also listed phone calls and meetings with other newspaper editors and executives. Blair says he initiated one of the phone calls to Murdoch and that they are no more than 45 minutes in total. I would have been wanting to explain what we are doing. I think I had similar calls with the Observer and the Telegraph," he says, adding: "I don't think there's anything particularly odd about that when you're facing such an issue." With him, probably, I would have been asking him what the situation was in the US and Australia, which were part of the coalition. But, no, I wouldn't have been asking him about press coverage. 11.14am: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted: 11.10am: Jay runs through Blair's meetings with media owners. Blair says about a third were with Murdoch papers, two thirds with other titles. Jay describes Blair's meetings with media owners as "eclectic" in his first year in office. He stopped meeting Paul Dacre, editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail, in 2001, according to Cabinet Office documents seen by the inquiry. Blair says it became "pretty pointless" to meet Dacre and Daily Mail executives from this time. 11.08am: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted: 11.07am: The Guardian's Lisa O'Carroll has just tweeted: 11.06am: Blair adds: The big issue they were generally worried about, and where they were lobbying very hard, was our commitment to trade union recognition, because we did introduce trade union recognition. 11.05am: Jay turns to cross-media ownership policy during Blair's premiership. Blair says he decided not to carry out a review into ownership policy because it would have been a "distraction" in his early time in office. Ownership is not the issue, Blair says - rather, it is the way the media operates. Rebekah Brooks. 11.01am: Jay asks if Blair got too close to Rebekah Brooks while he was in power. Blair says Brooks mattered because she was editor of the Sun at the time. He explains that towards the end of his tenure he needed all the friends he could get, but adds: To put it bluntly, the decision-maker was not Rebekah Brooks in relation to this. It was Rupert Murdoch, for sure. 11.00am: Blair is asked whether he added to the mystique around media moguls by inviting Murdoch to No 10 through the front door and not disclosing meetings. He says in future it would be better to publish everything about meetings. 10.57am: Broadcasters are very strongly influenced by the agendas of the press, Blair adds. He says it would be "pretty strange" if political leaders did not have "reasonably strong" relationships with media owners. 10.56am: Sky News has just tweeted: 10.55am: The "big fight" against the press is something you have to take into account "before you go off in a particular direction," Blair tells the inquiry 10.54am: Blair is asked whether he got too close to News International. He says that after leaving office his relationship became "completely different with him [Murdoch] and his family now." In office, "you were in a position where you were dealing with very powerful people who had a big impact in the political system," he says, adding that if these people were against you they were "really out against you." 10.52am: Blair continues: "With any of these big media groups, if you fall out with them then watch out, because it is relentless." He explains that the power of the press is why he decided to manage the media rather than confront it. The Daily Mail 10.50am: Blair is asked about the Daily Mail. "The Daily Mail is not a subject on which I would exercise much objectivity," he says. They attacked me, my family and my children. They do it very well, very effectively. The fact is if you fall out with the controlling element of the Daily Mail you are then going to be subject to a huge and sustained attack. 10.49am: Blair contends that his government made more policy changes against - rather than for - the interests of the Murdoch stable. I didn't feel under pressure from commercial interests from the Murdoch press or from anybody else. The pressure for me was more political. 10.47am: Rupert Murdoch is not an "identikit" rightwing person, Blair says. I wouldn't say he is a tribal Tory. He has bits of him that are meritocratic and anti-establishment, I would say. 10.45am: Blair is asked about the Sun. He describes the Sun and the Daily Mail as the two most powerful newspapers. Asked about whether the Sun is more powerful as it is influential with floating voters, he agrees and says "it is willing to shift [its political support]." 10.45am: Blair says in his witness statement that proprietors use their newspapers as "instruments of political power." "This is not confined to the Murdoch media," he adds. Blair believes "the bulk of the tabloid press" writes in a way that if they oppose a specific politician or opposition they will let that be known "in a pretty all-out way." 10.42am: Blair says the Times is "basically Eurosceptic" but "reports Europe fairly." 10.38am: Blair says the "misdescriptions" of European policy "wasn't straight reporting." He clarifies that he is not suggesting newspapers cannot be partisan, but believes it becomes difficult when "facts in the story will get slanted in a certain way." 10.37am: Blair is asked about the press and democratic accountability. He says there is no reason why newspapers should not be partisan. "My distinction is between that and how you actually report the story as a piece of journalism," he adds. 10.37am: Blair says the response by newspapers in leader columns following his speech underlines his point that it would have been very difficult to take on the press two years into his premiership. 10.35am: Jay reads from a Guardian editorial of 13 June 2007 titled "Right sermon, wrong preacher": There is an easy response to Tony Blair's lecture on the failings of the media, and some will seize on it. It is to accuse the prime minister - the master (some will say) of half truths, evasion and spin - of breathtaking hypocrisy and an almost clinical lack of self-awareness. Well, yes. But Mr Blair's heartfelt homily deserves a more serious response. His words will have struck a sympathetic chord, not simply among people in public life, frustrated at the way their words and deeds are mediated, but among a broad section of readers and viewers as well. Much of what he said was true, and it took some courage to say it, a courage that was doubtless easier to draw on amid the last embers of a political career. Mr Blair was right that journalism today is being dramatically challenged and changed as it has seldom been before - by the combination of a rapid technological revolution and aggressive economic competition from multiple new entrants. The world is speeding up. Old media companies are merging and converging as young media companies and audiences are fragmenting. He is right to highlight some of the worst qualities of some British journalism: a seam of sourness and aggression; a bullying, puffed up self-regard; a casualness about the borders between public and private; an obsession with impact over proportionality. All those are there on a daily basis for anyone to see. He is right that some journalists are more interested in influence than in reporting. He is right to point to the dangers of investing in, and promoting, views over news - though picking on the smallest boy in the playground, the Independent, was perhaps not the bravest moment in his speech. It is rare for anyone in public life to voice these kinds of truths about journalists - not least because (see all of the above) they rightly fear the consequences. That does not mean it is not worth saying. It also does not mean that Mr Blair has not got important things wrong, including missing some crucial parts of the overall picture. A speech about the British media which does not pay tribute to its strengths falls into the very trap - of painting the world in black and white - which is part of the prime minister's own charge sheet. The BBC is still the best journalistic organisation in the world. The online offerings of a handful of national papers are as rich and inventive as anything in the world. There is something about the polemical, argumentative, obstinate traditions of the British national press which grinds out a form of truth every bit as effectively as the supposedly more "objective" newspapers found in mainland Europe and North America. Mr Blair was largely dismissive of the democratising, diversifying potential of new media, preferring to emphasise its downside. In some parts of his critique Mr Blair was leading with his chin. Yes, newspapers report Westminster debates less than they once did. But it is pretty rich to be lectured on such matters by this prime minister who, more than any other, has marginalised parliament through a combination of sofa government, selective leaking and sophisticated media manipulation. His "complicity" in such methods was not simply - as he implied - a feature of early New Labour. It has been a consistent pattern - witness recent terror briefings to the Sunday papers. Truly, he helped feed the animal he now wants to chain. Not quite chain, it is true. Mr Blair ended by trailing hints about a changing regulatory framework which might encompass all media as technologies increasingly blur distinctions between print, online and broadcasters. It is a reasonable issue to raise, but we hope nothing will ever come of any attempts to place the press under any kind of statutory regulation. The British press is all the things Mr Blair says it is. But it must remain free to be both awful and, on its day, magnificent. 10.33am: Blair says the description by the Daily Mail of the press as a "big sloppy labrador" rather than a "feral beast" is one that he does not recognise, to laughter in court. 10.32am: The Guardian's Esther Addley has just tweeted: 10.32am: The Daily Telegraph criticised Blair following the speech as a "religiose" figure who wished for a statutory body to oversee the press. Blair tells the inquiry he believes Ofcom, the statutory media regulator, is the right organisation to oversee media policy but does not see it replacing the Press Complaints Commission. 10.31am: Blair is asked why he singled out the Independent for criticism in his "feral beasts" speech in 2007. He says the Independent was launched as a brand that would separate comment and news, but that its then editor referred to it as a "Viewspaper." Blair believes this was "indicative" of the damaging blurring of comment and news. 10.26am: Blair complains about the crossover of comment and news in newspapers. He says that this "stops being journalism. It's then an instrument of propaganda or political power. 10.24am: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted: 10.23am: Blair says "you certainly do feel the power being directed at you" by hostile parts of the press. He explains that he decided not to tackle the power of the press because it was not top on the list of his priorities. My view, rightly or wrongly, was that if in those circumstances I said I'm going to take on the media ... my view is that you would have had to clear the decks. This would have been an absolute major confrontation and you would have virtually every corner of the media against you. The price you would pay for that would push out the things I cared more about. He adds that he was not afraid of taking on the press but he knew "do not think for a second you are not in a long protracted battle." 10.21am: New Labour was still in the rhythm of opposition and campaigning in 1997, Blair says. He believes it is important for governments to have a "really strong media operation." My advice to any political leader is that you've got to have a very, very solid media operation. 10.18am: Here's how the Guardian's Patrick Wintour reported Blair's June 2007 "feral beast" speech: In a sweeping critique of the industry, Mr Blair claimed newspapers, locked into an increasingly bitter sales war in a 24-hour news environment, indulged in "impact journalism" in which truth and balance had become secondary to the desire for stories to boost sales and be taken up by other media outlets. He admitted that his own attempts to bypass traditional media through websites and press conferences had been "to no avail." He also conceded that he was partly to blame for the predicament, saying his determination to convey the Labour message in the period of opposition and early years in government had made him complicit in the decline in news standards. But he said the fierce competition for stories had led to the media now hunting in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits, but no one dares miss out. He added that distinctions between comment and news had become so blurred that it was rare to find newspapers reporting precisely what a politician was saying. It was incredibly frustrating, he said, adding that politicians had to act immediately to rebut false charges before they became fact. Mr Blair said he was describing "something few people in public life will say, but most know is absolutely true: a vast aspect of our jobs today - outside of the really major decisions, as big as anything else - is coping with the media, its sheer scale, weight and constant hyperactivity. At points, it literally overwhelms. The damage that can be done "saps the country's confidence and self-belief," he said. It undermines its assessment of itself, its institutions and above all, it reduces our capacity to take the right decisions, in the right spirit for our future. You can read the full article here, and the full text of the speech here. 10.17am: Robert Jay QC, lead counsel to the inquiry, asks Blair about his "feral beast" speech on the media in 2007, shortly before he left office. 10.17am: Blair disputes the notion of spin as ubilically attached to his New Labour government. He refers to the 1992 election and the Sun's "It was us wot won it" front page, saying: "I was absolutely determined that we should not be subject to the same onslaught." 10.13am: Political leaders have to "manage these major forces in the media" because the consequences are "harsh" if you fall out with them, Blair says. "The responsibility mainly is having not confronted this," he adds. 10.12am: Falling out of favour with a media group as leader of a political party "means that you then are effectively blocked from getting across your message," Blair tells the inquiry. Frankly, I decided as a political leader that I was going to manage that and not confront it. Blair says he wants to submit further written proposals on the future of press regulation. 10.07am: Blair begins by explaining that the relationship between politicians and media executives is inevitably close and will "inevitably involve tension." British journalism at its best is the best in the world, he says, adding that he will discuss the "unhealthy" aspects of the relationship between press and politicians. It has become "essential and crucial" to have close ties with the media, he adds. Leveson inquiry: Tony Blair 10.04am: The inquiry has begun as Tony Blair is sworn in. 10.02am: The Guardian's Esther Addely has just tweeted: 9.56am: Lance Price was on Radio 4's Today programme this morning, when he again suggested that there had been an implied deal between Blair and Murdoch. "We wanted every headline to be favourable to him [Tony Blair]," he said. There was nothing that we weren't prepared to do. He said Murdoch's influence had been one factor in the decision not to join euro. Asked if he felt that Blair regretted his focus on the media, Price said that towards the end of his term Blair became increasingly disenchanted with the press, citing the famous 2007 "feral beast" speech. 9.45am: Good morning and welcome to the Leveson inquiry live blog. Tony Blair becomes the first former prime minister to give evidence to the inquiry today, with nearly seven hours set aside for the ex-Labour leader to face questions. Blair will be quizzed on his ties with Rupert Murdoch and whether he struck an implied deal with the media mogul for the support of his newspapers. Blair, who was prime minister from 1997 to 2007, is likely to be asked about being named as godfather to Murdoch's daughter Grace. It was revealed last year that Blair attended the baptism of Murdoch's daughter on the banks of the Jordan in 2010. He is also expected to be asked about his conversations with Murdoch in the runup to the Iraq war in 2003. Blair had three phone calls with the News Corporation boss in the days before the conflict, which each of Murdoch's 175 newspapers including the Sun, the Times and News of the World supported. Alastair Campbell, the former No 10 spin doctor, told the inquiry that he could not recall the content of the phone calls, but said it was "complete nonsense" that Blair needed Murdoch's support for his policy in Iraq. Blair is also expected to be asked about his trip to a News Corporation conference in Australia in 1995, after he became leader of the opposition. His former aide, Lance Price, wrote in his book Where Power Lies about the trip: "A deal had been done, although with nothing in writing. If Murdoch were left to pursue his business interests in peace he would give Labour a fair wind.