The Sun wears its heart on the Right but
it will back Labour at the election
STEPHEN GLOVER
There is much rejoicing on the Left that Tony Blair has finally given up on the Sun and the Daily Mail. His recent remark that 'you can't please all the people all the time' has been widely interpreted as a dig at these two newspapers. Mr Blair has spent an awful lot of time trying to tame these wild beasts, it is said, and he now realises it is hopeless. His apparent repudiation of the right-wing press encourages the Left to hope that he may be more radical in a second term.
As far as the Daily Mail is concerned, the chasm with New Labour is probably unbridgeable. The Blairites wooed the Mail because it has among its readers the highest number of swing voters — those who switched from Tory to Labour at the last election — of any newspaper. But there was never any real closeness. The Mail, after all, endorsed the Tories in May 1997, though admittedly without much enthusiasm. There may have been a brief honeymoon, but for at least three years the paper has been a stern and unremitting critic of many government policies. I wouldn't say that relations have broken down because, in truth, they have never been very good.
The Sun is an entirely different proposition. The paper was once an enthusiastic supporter of New Labour, which it endorsed in 1997. There was a true honeymoon, and quite a long one. But after a while disenchantment set in, and for at least a year the Sun has often been a vituperative critic of New Labour. The issues which have made the paper's editor, David Yelland, see red have included the euro and the Dome. More recently, the Sun has also laid into the government over the European Army and castigated New Labour over its relationships with some of its donors. Meanwhile the paper has enjoyed something of a love affair with William Hague after Amanda Plate11, the Tory leader's media adviser, had acted as an assiduous go-between.
All this has led some observers to suppose that the Sun might reject Labour and support the Tories at the next election. It is not to be. Within the past two or three weeks the paper's attitude towards the government has perceptibly softened. This may well be related to a meeting which took place between Rupert Murdoch and Mr Blair before Christmas, during which the Prime Minister is believed to have reassured the Sun's proprietor that there will
not be a snap referendum on the euro after a Labour victory. This may seem a slight concession, but in the circumstances it was enough to tip the balance.
The truth is that the Sun does not like backing a loser — it has endorsed the winner in every election since 1979 — and expects the Tories to lose. Its heart is on the Right, and its love for Mr Hague has not abated. It is his party that is the problem. 'Hague is a one-man band', the paper bemoaned just before Christmas. 'He is a man — alone in the desert — trudging towards inevitable defeat. But his is a noble struggle.' The theme of Tory hopelessness was taken up again in a leader on 8 January, when the paper also lavished praise on the government, its warmest for a very long time. The Conservatives were 'in crisis' and some of them 'don't seem to want to fight'. As for Mr Blair, 'he and his Chancellor can quite rightly point out that they have improved our lot'.
It was therefore no great surprise when Trevor Kavanagh, the Sun's influential political editor, said on BBC1's Question Time last week that his paper would probably support Labour at the next election. If it were true to its core beliefs, it would back the Tories, but it is sure they are going to lose. There is also the consideration that more Sun readers are likely to vote Labour than for any other party — 49 per cent according to the most recent MORI poll. Above all, there is Mr Murdoch, no doubt preoccupied with his possible £27 billion acquisition of DirecTV, the American satellite broadcaster, but certain that New Labour will win. Murdoch the businessman does not want to cross swords with the party even before its second term has begun.
So Mr Blair has nothing to fear from the Sun. But its endorsement will not be unwavering. Because it disagrees with New Labour about so much, it will inevitably forget itself from time to time. The Sun reader will get an impression of something much less than wholehearted support. I expect the Blairites will be content with this. What they feared was a day-in, dayout onslaught, and they will gladly settle for a slightly grudging and sometimes inconsistent ally. They will doubtless draw comfort from the thought that the Sun is drawn to them out of a sort of weakness. For all the reasons I have mentioned, the paper has nowhere else to go. Is the BBC's ban on any reference to Peter Mandelson's sexuality still in force? In November 1998 Anne Sloman, the corporation's chief adviser on editorial policy, wrote an internal memorandum which one might have expected to flow more naturally from the pen of a Soviet or East German apparatchik. 'Please will all programmes note that under no circumstances whatsoever should the allegations about the private life of Peter Mandelson be repeated or referred to on any broadcast.' As recently as December this ruling was still active. My colleague Simon Hoggart described in his Guardian column how during the recording of a BBC Radio Four programme an implicit reference to Peter Mandelson's sexuality had been disallowed. Mr Hoggart rightly thought this a bit rum since the whole world now knows that Mr Mandelson lives with and openly escorts his Brazilian partner, Reinaldo da Silva.
I decided to try to seek clarification from the great Sloman herself. Was her edict extant? Unsurprisingly, she did not return my call. I asked whether I could leave a message on her voicemail. No, I could not. Her voicemail only accepted messages from people she knew. Eventually, I was shunted off to an underling in the BBC's press office. This young women first denied that the original memorandum had referred to Mr Mandelson by name. She then said that general BBC guidelines forbidding gratuitous reference to the private lives of all public figures were still in force.
This was not very helpful. So I spoke to another source in the BBC. He said that the Sloman edict had not been rescinded, but it had been relaxed. It had been raised during a monthly editorial meeting on 19 December as a result of Mr Hoggart's column, and there had been a widespread view that it was a bit draconian. Still, nothing had been formally agreed. This was just what some people felt.
So technically the Sloman ruling still applies. Someone should test it. Mr Mandelson retains an extraordinary hold over the BBC. Before Christmas the Today programme reported the (in fact ludicrous) claim that he had said that George W. Bush was biased towards Sinn Fein. Mr Mandelson rang up the programme to say that he had never said any such thing, and his statement was read out by an obliging Sue MacGregor. That's service for you.
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