drip … drip … drip … it’s not raining. It’s The Sun.

Much has been made of the news today that The Sun newspaper has withdrawn it’s support for the Labour Party and the New Labour project generally, since clearly our democracy is based on the musings of one australian/american by name of Rupert Murdoch.

The Sun splash image

On the one hand some are insinuating that the fact that The Sun now supports David Cameron’s Conservative over the alternatives will mean that Labour supporters (both of them) will flock to the party in blue and send Labour out into the cold for another 20 years.

On the other hand Labour ministers are down-playing the papers move as being irrelevant and pointing out that they have more respect for The Sun readers than they do for The Sun itself and that they’re sure that Sun readers are quite capable of making up their own minds on the issue.

The truth probably lies somewhere in between.  Although, to be honest, I’m not sure how much faith I have in people who get their political commentary from The Sun (or any ‘red-top’ for that matter).

The simple fact is that this move will not instantly convert thousands of Labour supporters to Conservatives, but what it will mean is that the drip-drip-drip of pro-Conservative propoganda will niggle away at those who may have either become disaffected with Labour and are on the verge of realising that they aren’t the ‘working mans party’ that they once were … the fact that they are arguably further to the right than the Tories on some issues though should have highlighted this for them before now!

It’s the drip-drip-drip that’s important though.  By continuously repeating ‘facts’ ad nauseum and supporting a particular party by reporting events through a particular lens then readers can be nudged in a particular direction, a tactic employed by the Labour party in Scotland in relation to the SNP.

It’s interesting that the Scottish edition of the paper isn’t following head offices lead on this one though, I imagine since they’d like to retain some sort of readership in Scotland.  Which raises the specter that the whole thing is merely a cynical ploy to sell papers … although one does wonder if some backroom deal has been made with the Tories in order to secure what amounts to turning the former ‘newspaper’ into little more than a propoganda rag … if it wasn’t this before.

The Editor of the Scottish edition was highly ambiguous about where his edition stands on the matter, acknowledging that Labour had failed yet refusing to support any of the other parties fighting it out in Scotland, it’s true that The Sun briefly supported independence during the 90’s and so it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the paper could yet support the SNP in Scotland which would set up an interesting dichotomy where the English edition supports the most pro-union party whilst supporting the main pro-independence party in Scotland … I’m not sure how they could explain this away to their readership so I’ll not hold my breath.