The big switch-over?

HASN'T MURDOCH'S BEST-SELLING RED-TOP ALWAYS BEEN CLOSER TO THE RIGHT THAN THE LEFT?

Sound the claxons! Stop the press! Make church bells knell in the towns! The Sun, that much-maligned, much-loved mouthpiece for the man on the street, has switched its political loyalties from New Labour to the Tories. WHAT A SCOOP! … apparently.

Today, as blue smoke was made to billow from its printing factory’s chimneys, Britain’s most popular tabloid newspaper covered its inside pages with pithy commentaries about how the Blair-Brown project has failed and how Cameron has the 'nouse' to lead us out of the recession. And the indications from political analysts, buttressed by the fury of delegates at the Labour Party conference in Brighton, are that this shift is an important one; that it could be the decisive pillow-over-the-face for Brown’s government. But is this really the case?

On the paper’s website today, there was a video of street-wandering punters being asked what they thought of The Sun 'going blue'. Unanimous answer: 'it's for the best.' You wonder, however, how the same punters would have responded to the question 'what party has The Sun been supporting for the last twelve years?'

In truth, like the man on the street, the tabloid has always had its own independent political concerns. And, like the man on the street, the only time these concerns were ever especially party-political was when the paper announced (as it usually did) who it wanted to win a general election.

No one really doubts that these decisions were made by The Sun's plutocrat proprietor Rupert Murdoch, whose switch from Tory to Labour in 1997 is often regarded as a decisive factor in Blair's success. So, the real question is , was the man who crushed the wage protests of Wapping printers unions in 1986, who was Thatcher's stalwart supporter, and who recently called for the BBC to downsize for the benefit of private broadcasters, really a keen supporter of New Labour?

Short answer: no. Far from being leftist during the time it has putatively supported the government, the real politics of The Sun has always been socially conservative, trumpeting restrictive immigration policies, large defence-budgets and Euro-scepticism. Murdoch suffered Blair a) because he had always been in favour of reducing the power of the trade unions and of increasing the role of the private sector, and b) (more importantly) because he had to: the Tories were up to their necks in sleaze and were terribly, terribly unpopular. The paper saw that the mood of the country was for a change in government, and took the initiative so as to seem to be leading the way.

In fact, The Sun has never really driven political change, but predicted it, and reaped the rewards of doing so. By backing the winning horse in 1997, the paper developed an assured reputation as the barometer of political opinion in Britain, the voice of the hard-working classes, and whether or not Murdoch did have any influence over policy-making in the early years of the Labour government, the mere suggestion did much to cement his reputation as the most powerful media baron in Britain. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In 1997, Murdoch sensed Blair's victory in the offing and wanted to be on the winning side. Today, the same thing happened, but with one crucial difference. The expected outcome of the 2010 general election suits Murdoch better than the 1997 outcome. Perhaps this, rather than any tangible ideological or editorial shift, is reason The Sun is being so boisterous about going blue.