We can win without The Sun, but not its readers

By Paul Richards

It was the column that Trevor Kavanagh has been itching to write for years. The Sun’s leading lights have never been happy supporting Labour, even in 1997, when they dramatically backed Blair. Now, they return home to the Conservatives. We can expect a Kinnock light-bulb style attack on Brown, with all its viciousness and vindictiveness, over the next few months.

The news that the Sun Backs Cam flltered through the conference hotels last night like a bacillus. It took whatever bounce had been afforded by the big speech out of the step of delegates. In effect it means that at the end of the week in Brighton the task of winning the next election is harder than it was at the start.

It would be easy to misunderstand the meaning of the Sun’s switch. For many Labour people, the Sun is a little short of demonic. They remember the slavish support for Thatcher. Some recall the lies about the Hillsborough disaster. They consider Rupert Murdoch an over-powerful plutocrat. But the point is not that individuals like Murdoch, Kavanagh and Pascoe-Watson have turned the Sun round to the Tories. The point is that the Sun follows, not leads public opinion. They back the winner. They reflect the dominant views of their ten million readers, which they assiduously monitor, test and poll with every kind of focus group and opinion poll. What their polling of Sun readers is telling them is that the people who buy, read and enjoy reading the Sun newspaper, what the admen call C2Ds, and what you and I call taxi-drivers, plasterers, sparks, posties, check-out assistants, and the rest of the millions who make Britain tick, have deserted the Labour Party.

What’s the lesson? The Sun was always going to do this, as long as Gordon Brown was leader. Their timing is designed to inflict maximum damage, and they haven’t finished yet. They’re not coming back to Labour any time soon. But Labour’s task in the few months we have left before polling day is to win back the Sun readers who form the backbone of the British electorate.