BRITISH PRIME minister Gordon Brown, furious at the declaration by Britain’s biggest-selling tabloid newspaper that it will support the Conservatives in next year’s general election, sharply criticised television interviewers yesterday.
He told Sky News’s Adam Boulton that he “was behaving like a bit of a political propagandist”, and complained that he was not being given “a fair chance” to get his message across.
Boulton, he said, insisted on talking about personality and about whether he would leave office before the government’s term of office ends next June.
Following the interview, Mr Brown got up to leave, without realising that he had a microphone on and walked across the camera shot of the BBC, as their interviewer prepared to introduce him.
Speaking to GMTV, Mr Brown played down the significance of the Sun’s move: “It’s the British people that decide elections. It’s the British people that I’m interested in and it’s the British people that I was talking about. Newspapers are entitled to their opinions. Obviously you want newspapers to be for you. But I’ve got an old-fashioned view. You look to newspapers for news, not propaganda. I don’t think editorials will decide elections.”
The decision by the Sun to withdraw the support from Labour that it has given since 1997 was revealed to Labour ministers, ironically, as they attended a function held by the Sun’s parent company, News International, on Tuesday night. Business secretary Peter Mandelson expressed his anger directly to News International executives, though he denied later that he had used foul language, saying that he had called Sun journalists “a bunch of chumps”.
Conservative leader David Cameron expressed delight with the Sun’s decision: “Obviously I want the support of as many people in the country as we can win over . . . I think they see the government is exhausted and out of ideas and they see a regenerated, refreshed Conservative party ready to serve.
“But it is people that win elections and I want to say that,” he told a London radio station.
The Sun’s associate editor, Trevor Kavanagh, confirmed yesterday that News International’s head Rupert Murdoch had played a central role in the tabloid’s decision to back the Tories. Its action prompted Tony Woodley, the Liverpool-born joint general secretary of the Unite trade union, to rip up a copy of the newspaper.
The Sun was boycotted in Liverpool in 1989 after the Hillsborough stadium disaster when it falsely claimed that Liverpool fans had pick-pocketed the dying and urinated on and attacked police trying to save the injured.
“In Liverpool, we learned a long time ago what to do,” said Mr Woodley as he tore the paper in two to cheers from delegates, “We don’t need any Australian-American coming to our country, with a paper that’s never supported one progressive policy from our party, including the minimum wage, telling us how our politics should be run,” he went on.
Former Sunday Times editor turned television presenter Andrew Neil said the Sun’s decision to back Mr Cameron will be influential compared with its last-minute, reluctant backing for Labour in 2005.
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