The Sun’s backing for different parties in England and Scotland could be seen as a sign that this is an election like no other. And yet in some ways the Sun’s decision to support the SNP in Scotland and Tories elsewhere reflects the history of Rupert Murdoch’s ownership of Britain’s biggest-selling paper.
It might be, in the words of the press regulator turned senior Sun editor Stig Abell, a “funny old election” but the paper is behaving as though the world hasn’t changed since the 1980s – and not just because of its dodgy photomontages and a picture of a headless Kate that has spooky echoes of Diana.
To recap. In England, the Sun sports a cheesy front page with a baby David Cameron swaddled in the arms of the Duchess of Cambridge and the headline “It’s a Tory!”. In Scotland, the paper superimposes a picture of SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon on Princess Leia’s body and tells readers “why it’s time to vote SNP”.
They are so different – and yet both papers are full-frontal attacks on the Labour party. With an election too close to call and nationalist challenges from Ukip in England and the SNP in Scotland, this is the Sun giving all it’s got to keep David Cameron in No 10.
In a tweet earlier in the week, Abell referred to possibly the most iconic Sun election front page when he posted the results of a poll predicting an SNP landslide in Scotland and asking “will the last Labour MP in Scotland please turn out the light?”
The accusation of a cynical political ploy – backing a party loathed by its London counterparts in Scotland where Labour is facing armageddon – is strongly denied by the paper’s editors. The Scottish Sun’s leader says the contrasting front pages are “not hard to explain”.
This is a Scottish newspaper, produced in Scotland by a Scottish editorial team, fighting for the best interests of our readers. If that means we take a position different to our colleagues down south, then so be it.
And don’t buy this desperate ‘vote SNP, get Tory’ lie. If we send 50 anti-Tory MPs to London, why does it matter if only a handful are Labour this time?
But it isn’t hard to link the decision with the fact that Murdoch is in London this week. Though not known as a massive fan of David Cameron – just read his tweets over the weekend – he is far from being a Milifan. A party leader backed by the unions would never win the backing of a man who famously crushed the print bosses.
David Yelland, the editor of the Sun during its pro-Tony Blair era, says: “Ed Miliband owes nothing to the media whatsoever. If he is elected he will be the first PM for generations ... to get into Downing Street knowing he owes no debts to any editor, any proprietor or any newspaper.”
Another senior editor at a right wing newspaper told me: “If Miliband gets in, it will be a disaster. The first thing he’ll do is Leveson.”
Murdoch has admitted that he was closely involved in the Sun’s decision to endorse Alex Salmond’s SNP at the Scottish elections just as the first minister was promising to lobby for News Corp to take control of BSkyB.
He told the Leveson inquiry that he was “probably” involved in agreeing to the Sun’s emphatic “Keep Salm and carry on” front-page endorsement of Salmond in April 2011 but that it was his staff who made him do it.
Like all media owners, Murdoch likes backing winners. What’s the point of backing a loser? He is understood to have already expressed his anger that the paper’s political coverage does not seem to be breaking through, either for the Tories or in newspaper sales. The Sun sold 3m copies a day in 2010; it is now at 1.85m.
Back in the glory days of 1992, after superimposing the head of Labour leader Neil Kinnock on a lightbulb and asking readers to turn it off if he came to power, the Sun claimed to have won it for the Conservatives. So much has changed since then, not least an internet that dissects each decision and is frankly better at photoshopping.
But politics has also changed and the enemies of newspaper owners and editors who want a Conservative victory are many-headed. Not for nothing did the Sun paint a gruesome image of a “Six Edded Beast” including Gerry Adams, union boss Len McCluskey and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon to terrify its readers on Wednesday. These are complicated times for any newspaper that wants to control the debate. Will the Sun’s leaders put Cameron in Downing Street? We’ll find out on 8 May.
