The Sun newspaper backs Labour in blow to Rishi Sunak
The Sun newspaper backs Labour in blow to Rishi Sunak
The paper has previously backed the Tories since 2009
The Sun newspaper has backed Labour at the General Election providing a huge blow to Rishi Sunak’s chances.
The tabloid has said “It’s time for a new manager” hours before Britain is set to go to the polls.
The paper also famously backed Tony Blair’s Labour Party when he won a landslide victory in 1997, switching sides after more than 20 years of unswerving support for the Tory party. It has previously backed Tory candidates for the past 15 years helping David Cameron and Theresa May enter Downing Street.
The Rupert Murdoch-owned paper wrote: It’s time for change. The insurmountable problem faced by the (Conservatives) is that - over the course of 14 often chaotic years - they have become a divided rabble, more interested in fighting themselves than running the country.
“By the time Rishi Sunak moved into No10, Britain had had five Prime Ministers in just 12 years. In 2022 alone, there were four Home Secretaries, four Chancellors, and five Education Secretaries.
“All this upheaval, backstabbing and mayhem came at a price.”
It added: "There are still plenty of concerns about Labour ... But, by dragging his party back to the centre ground of British politics for the first time since Tony Blair was in No. 10, Sir Keir has won the right to take charge."
I was wondering "when are the conservative supporting media going to start flipping so they're on the winning team?".
Looks like "the day before" is the answer!
Seems like a daft idea to change sides right at the 11th hour. Their readers tend to have a certain amount of momentum to their thinking, you need to slowly work up to a tonal shift.
I don't think The Sun is trying to convince people to vote Labour, I think they just don't want to be on the losing side, so that's why they're not backing Rishi.
They even say in their piece that they support many of Rishi's policies. Then they reluctantly say "it is time for Labour", which sounds to me like a bitter acceptance that Labour will likely win, rather than them encouraging people to vote for Labour.
So late in the day and given the impressive poll lead, it just feels opportunistic. I bet they'll try and claim "it was The Sun wot won it!"
The interesting thing is that Starmer hasn't been courting Murdoch, as Blair did. His plan seems to have been keep your head down and don't give the right wing press an attack surface.
Starmer tried to court Murdoch hard, but apparently Murdoch holds a grudge that it was Starmer as DPP who prosecuted the phone hacking crimes and got Andy Coulson convicted and has refused to have anything to do with him.
The Sun and opportunism go hand in hand.
Not Murdoch, but he's written quite a bit for the Telegraph.
So this means the sun won’t immediately blame everything on labour after the election, right? Right?
Solid, principled journalism. /s