Either Rupert Murdoch is lying under oath, or Gordon Brown is.
That is the only conclusion to draw from Monday's testimony at Britain's public inquiry into tabloid excesses, where Mr. Brown, the former prime minister, took the stand and denied that he'd "declared war" on Mr. Murdoch's media empire.
Earlier, the media mogul had told the inquiry that Mr. Brown had phoned him in 2009, in the early runup to the next year's national elections, and while he had seemed to be "not in a balanced state of mind," had ranted at the Australian press baron: "Your company has declared war on my government and we have no alternative but to make war on your company."
Mr. Murdoch's top-circulation newspaper, The Sun, had just abandoned its front-page backing of the left-leaning Labour Party, which Mr. Brown's predecessor, Tony Blair, had established after winning over Mr. Murdoch in 1995. It did so in typical Murdoch fashion, with a gigantic front-page banner reading "LABOUR'S LOST IT" beneath an unflattering photo of the prime minister.
Mr. Brown, who has been an ordinary Labour MP since his party's defeat in that election, took the stand and denied that any such call had taken place: "I couldn't be unbalanced on a call that I didn't have, and a threat that was not made."
He denied having declared war on Mr. Murdoch, or even having complained about the infamous front page and change of allegiances. "I never complained to The Sun about us losing their support," he said. "I never phoned them up. I have never asked a newspaper for their support directly and I've never complained when they haven't given us their support."
That might seem strange. After all, Gordon Brown can only gain from appearing to have launched a war against Mr. Murdoch. It makes him look strikingly different from Mr. Blair, who spent much of his career trying to woo the magnate – and from current Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, who is embroiled in scandals over advisers and cabinet ministers who are accused of having been under the influence of Mr. Murdoch.
But Mr. Brown was playing a larger game, arguing that Mr. Murdoch had been wrong about everything, right down to his recollections of telephone conversations.
At one point, he argued that the press baron had absolutely no influence on his policies and views, unlike those of the prime ministers before and after him: If he had gone along with Mr. Murdoch's suggestions, he said, then Britain "would have been at war with France and Germany, with England [acting] as the 51st state of the U.S."
If it can be proved that one of these powerful men is lying about the phone conversation, then one of them could theoretically face criminal charges for perjury – though this is a grey area, since although witnesses all swear on a Bible (or equivalent secular document) to tell the truth, the Leveson inquiry is a quasi-judicial hearing. One Leveson witness, former Cameron aide Andy Coulson, has already been arrested for perjury, but that was in connection with an earlier criminal trial.
And the truth has yet to be determined, and may never be. According to 10 Downing St. phone records released to the inquiry, Mr. Brown phoned Mr. Murdoch on 11 occasions between the time he assumed the prime ministership in July, 2007, and the end of 2009.
On the other hand, two aides to Mr. Brown who listened in on the aforementioned phone conversation have both testified that they heard no threatening language uttered.