Total Politics 2010 Election Map

Total Politics - because knowledge is power

 It looks like Britain's biggest daily will back David Cameron, but how will the rest of Fleet Street cast their votes? James Silver reports 

 

 

 

When (in 1992) we said 'It was The Sun wot won It', we didn't mean it literally," the paper's former political editor Trevor Kavanagh once told this reporter during an interview. "It was just exuberance. We got carried away with  the euphoria." The venerable and instinctively Tory Kavanagh was, of course, wise to downplay The Sun's infamous boast that it had helped snatch victory for John Major against Neil Kinnock - after all, there is scant  evidence that a newspaper's endorsement actually translates into hard votes. Nevertheless, the support of Britain's best-selling daily, with its nearly eight million readers, is still seen as talismanic: PMs-in-waiting covet it and are willing to break sweat to win it.

 

News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch, the paper's ultimate boss, likes The Sun to be in tune with the public mood. With Tony Blair enjoying an unassailable lead in the polls, the title's front page splash in March 1997 - headlined "The Sun Backs Blair" - was a tippingpoint in the campaign, signifying that the hourglass sands had finally run out for Major. Yet before 1997, it should be recalled, The Sun was unflinchingly Tory; White Van Man writ large, with a gut-level loathing for Labour under Kinnock. Indeed, who can forget the paper's 1992 ballot-day splash, featuring the Labour leader's head as a light-bulb: "If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights?"

 

Gordon Brown may still get away without finding his face morphed into a light-bulb (even an energy-saving one) come polling day, but the evidence suggests that, after endorsing Labour three times in a row, it will be the Tories basking in The Sun's approval next time. First, there's the Tory leader's hefty poll lead - Murdoch backs winners. Then there's the paper's brutal coverage of the PM. Calling for a snap election in May, a Sun editorial described the government as "paralysed in the face of urgent and momentous challenges", claiming: "We are rudderless and adrift in dangerous seas, with nobody at the helm."

 

A call to Kavanagh - now the paper's semiretired associate editor, but still one of Fleet Street's biggest political beasts - elicits a genial 'no comment' about which party the title will support. "I don't want to speak on behalf of The Sun about that," he says warily. However, he doesn't pull his punches in his assessment of Brown's performance. "Brown is totally discredited as a Prime Minister and has been a busted flush ever since he decided not to call the general election he might have won. Everything has gone wrong for him since then. He's become more wooden, stilted and awkward than he was before and I really think he's finished." Read into those comments what you will.

 

While Kavanagh declines the invitation to reveal The Sun's hand, a separate line of enquiry proves rather more fruitful. Asked whether the paper is set to switch allegiance to Cameron, a very well-placed source, speaking on condition of anonymity, says:"There is no way The Sun can support Labour and they've got to support someone. I don't think Sun readers would be too happy if the paper supported Labour this time. They've done it three times and I think supporting them again would be like supporting John major in 1997- Sun readers would have been absolutely appalled".

 

Over at the Daily Mirror, the paper's associate editor Kevin Maguire, who is close to Brown's inner-circle and was once touted to become the PM's media chief, says there's no doubt in his mind which way The Sun will jump. "of course they're going to come out for Cameron. Along with The Mail and the Telegraph, The Sun backed the Tories at the European elections- which got massively over-looked at the time. Also The Sun didn't so much back Labour, it backed Blair and the only Labour policy I can remember them enthusiastically supporting was the Iraq war.

 

If The Sun's support for Cameron is a done deal, as far as Maguire is concerned, it's a certainty that his own paper will, as ever, back Labour. However, there are question marks over how enthusiastically The Mirror will choose to do so, given the government's unpopularity. Elsewhere on Fleet Street, The Independent is thought likely to plump for the Liberal Democrats, while The Times is reportedly the scene of a "tussle" between Tory-supporting Daniel Finkelstein and New Labour-inclined David Aaronvitch for editor James Harding's ear. "The Times seems to transport itself effortlessly from establishment to establishment," says Maguire, who predicts the News International title will back Cameron.

 

Meanwhile, The Guardian, which during the Blair era was known as The Gordian in The media vote Downing Street for its sympathetic coverage of the then-Chancellor, published an editorial in June calling on Brown to step down, thereby making a full-throated endorsement for the embattled PM all but impossible. However, advocating that its readers vote Tory seems certain to be a step too far, when you consider that, according to an Ipsos MORI poll, just fi ve per cent of Guardian readers said they intended to vote Conservative in 2005.

 

Another key newspaper, which Blair managed to neutralise in 1997, is The Daily Mail. Brown, too, worked hard to cultivate a close relationship with all-powerful editorin- chief, Paul Dacre. Indeed, the pair could often be spotted sharing early morning walks in Kensington Gardens. However, while the unlikely friendship is thought to have resulted in fewer personal attacks on the PM on the Mail's leader page (Dacre's senior columnists and editors were given free reign elsewhere in the title), it is thought the paper is all but certain to endorse Cameron come polling day.

 

There are those who argue that in the age of Twitter feeds and multi-platform news, such endorsements - even from titles like the Mail, which has nearly five million readers - no longer really matter. But that begs the question: why then has Cameron (like Brown and Blair before him), worked so hard to secure backing from the big  newspaper groups?

 

The answer, syas Tim Montgomerie, editor of the influential ConservativeHome blog, lies in the bigger picture. "This is not just about polling day, this is about long-term relationship-building," he explains. "I can't see anything stopping the Tories winning, so they're playing a game of maximising their advantage. Building these relationships is about sustaining [the Tories] in government. They're planning probably a two-term strategy and they will need the support of the Murdoch empire when they're taking some of the most diffi cult decisions this country's faced for 20-to-30 years."

 

When it comes to the campaign itself, Montgomerie says the Tories' media message will emphasise "responsibility and the country living within its means - it'll be grown-up, sober stuff". He adds: "They will, of course, also focus on attacking Labour, and they are now talking more about Labour and their record, rather than Brown personally.  that's because they are factoring in the possibility that Brown will be replaced before the election."

 

But if the Tories reportedly have their strategy honed, Maguire's inquiries suggest that Labour have yet to agree on theirs. "I don't think they've decided on a strategy yet," he says. "I think the Labour campaign is going to offer some vision; some gain as well as pain. What I expect we'll hear is: 'We got you through this period. Don't risk throwing it all away with this inexperienced bloke and his bunch of odd-balls, who will dismantle the NHS.'"

 

The recent media furore over the NHS, prompted by Republican attacks on President Obama's push to reform America's health system, has not been lost on Labour. In mid- August, the party appointed the personable Bristol East MP Kerry McCarthy as its new media campaign spokesperson. Inevitably dubbed the Twitter Tsar, McCarthy says that while there is "no substitute for traditional forms of campaigning", the coming election "will be the first where new media comes into its own".

 

She points to the We Love the NHS Twittercampaign as an example of how social networking sites and blogs will provide instant reaction and rebuttal, breathing new life into stories which might once have survived just a single news cycle. "In previous years, each party would have a campaign grid and it would be clear what your opponents would want each day's announcement to be," she says. "There'd be a set pattern to how the story was planned through the day and you'd aim to make the evening TV news and morning radio. But now with Twitter and blogging it's much easier to challenge things, so you'll get ongoing debate, which we saw with We Love the NHS."

 

Digital campaigning could be one of the few areas where Labour may yet steal a march over their rivals. In Montgomerie's judgement, the Conservatives' "internet strategy is poor", with all their emphasis and cash focused on "traditional campaigning", with digital sidelined. Moreover, the party, he says, has missed a trick in failing to build an extensive digital network of supporters.

 

"Over the past few years, the Conservatives should have been running websites, locally and nationally, on which they championed issues like Europe, immigration and climate change, collecting tens of thousands of email addresses. That would have been the beginnings of the future of the party. If they had those activists now, online, and they'd spent the last few years building up that network, they'd have half a million to a million people they could fundraise off the back of, whom they could energise to deliver leafl ets and turn videos viral etc.

 

"But they haven't done any of it. Their internet strategy is poor. WebCameron is the only interesting thing they've done. And they've left a massive gap in the market for Labour and the opposition," he says.

 

 

 

James Silver is a freelance journalist