Tony Blair : secret romance with Wendi Deng
A new book, Tony Blair: The Tragedy of
Power, has revealed the secret romance between former prime Minister of
Britain and Chinese woman, Wendi Deng, the former wife of media mogul,
Rupert Murdoch, leading to Murdoch divorcing the wife.
The sensational book,written by Tom Bower,
an investigative writer also touches on Blair’s lies on the Iraqi war.
It is published by Faber and Faber and will be released on Thursday.
Here is the excerpt on Blair’s secret romance with Wendi Weng…
Murdoch and Wendi Deng before their separation
“Though Blair spent most of his time
jetting around Africa and the Middle East after leaving office, he made
sure he kept up with Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire owner of the News
Corporation media group.
In 2011, the two men met in America — not
long after Murdoch took the decision to close the News of the World.
Afterwards, Blair teamed up with the tycoon’s wife, Wendi Deng, to make
business trips to her native China. His overtures to the Chinese — to
become an adviser to one of the country’s sovereign wealth funds — fell
on stony ground. But he grew close to Deng.
The following year, he visited the
attractive 43-year-old twice at her husband’s London home. Then, that
August, he was spotted alone with her at a Mayfair club.
Deng was clearly smitten. In an email to
herself around that time, she wrote of Blair’s loyal aide, Catherine
Rimmer: ‘Katherine [sic] Rimmer does not like me because she does not
want Tony gets [sic] in trouble with me.’
Next, Blair few out to see Deng at Murdoch’s 1,000-acre home near Carmel in California.
She told her husband nothing about Blair’s visit; instead she said that she was staying at the ranch with a girlfriend.
In fact, her friend had already left when
the former Prime Minister arrived, and Deng had also told some of her
staff to make themselves scarce — while Blair’s protection officers were
quartered in a nearby hotel.
On June 11, 2013, Murdoch and his wife hosted a dinner for a group of friends and visitors from London.
Unknown to his guests, and especially to his wife, he had already decided to file for a divorce the following day.
It was
not a spur of the moment decision. Murdoch had been growing weary of
his wife’s sharp tongue, her frequent absence at parties and on foreign
trips, and the endless visits of her Chinese friends.
Her habit of speaking Chinese in his presence was particularly irksome. Their 14-year marriage, he decided, had run its course.
But there was another reason he’d had
enough. While the Metropolitan Police were investigating phone-hacking
practices at the News of the World, Murdoch’s team had sifted through
millions of emails on his company computers.
During the course of this, emails from
Deng were uncovered that suggested a close relationship with a tennis
coach in Carmel, another with the founder of Google, Eric Schmidt — and a
third with Tony Blair. It was left to one of Murdoch’s sons to show the
messages to the ageing tycoon.
They made for unedifying reading. In one
memo to herself, Deng had written: ‘Oh s***, oh s***. Whatever why I’m
so so missing Tony. Because he is so charming and his clothes are so
good.
‘He has such a good body and he had his
really, really good legs Butt [sic] . . . and he is slim tall and good
skin. Pierce blue eyes which I love. Love his eyes. Also I love his
power on the stage . . . and what else what else what else .
Other messages suggested that Blair had met Deng in New York, London and Beijing.
According to Murdoch, he then quizzed his
servants in Carmel and learned that Blair had stayed overnight on April
27, 2013. Yet Blair had met him the following day in Los Angeles — to
ask for money for his Faith Foundation — and hadn’t mentioned staying at
the ranch or seeing Deng.
Murdoch’s staff told him the rest: during
their meals, the couple had been seen feeding each other, and Blair had
also been spotted joining Deng in her bedroom and closing the door.
Hours after the divorce was announced,
Blair telephoned Murdoch, insisting he was innocent. But, after a brief
conversation, the tycoon refused to take any more of his calls.
Blair nevertheless spoke regularly with
Deng on the phone. With Cherie’s support, both he and Deng publicly
denied there had ever been an affair. No one could definitively prove
that there had — but Murdoch ridiculed Blair’s denials. And there can be
no doubt that the former PM was damaged by global interest in the
scandal.
For six years, he had cultivated an image
as a respected globe-trotting statesman, but this business with Deng
shocked some of his associates. Particularly appalled was an American
billionaire, Tim Collins, who was not only on the board of Blair’s Faith
Foundation but had also given it considerable sums of money.
‘The Wendi Murdoch affair put me off,’ he
recalled. ‘The real man was revealed. He’s incapable of self-criticism. I
felt so naïve.’
Collins duly withdrew his support from the Foundation. The row also fuelled the end of Blair’s role as Middle East peace envoy.
- Adapted from Broken Vows: Tony Blair — The Tragedy Of Power by Tom Bower, which will be published on Thursday by Faber & Faber at £20. © Tom Bower.
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