If Starmer wins, The Sun won't be wot won it...

... and it never was. The myth of Murdoch the Kingmaker most serves the man himself.

Previously: The Paul Marshall Plan
Marshall's extremist views are a perfect fit for The Daily Telegraph, yet the rest of the media ignore them or cling to a nostalgic idea of a paper that's surrendered to its most lunatic fringe...

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Earlier this week, the i — Britain’s most irritatingly named newspaper — ran one of those exclusives make you mutter, “well, duh”, while simultaneously provoking an eye roll of doubt: Murdoch is leaning towards backing Labour – but doubts remain over Starmer. It’s a one claim story — and pretty shaky, caveated claim at that — with a choir of anonymous sources singing it.

David Parsley, the i’s Chief News Correspondent, writes:

The Murdochs’ UK newspapers are potentially leaning towards backing Labour if Sir Keir Starmer maintains the party’s strong lead over the Conservatives, sources close to the father-and-son media moguls say.

But the positions of The Times and The Sun are “not a done deal” amid doubts over whether Labour can “hit the home run” by the time the election comes around, senior insiders told i.

The words “potentially” and :”leaning towards” are what make the i’s decision to slap the thoroughly debase ‘exclusive’ label on the story so ludicrous. I might, possibly, if the mood is right and my bank balance is sufficient, be leaning towards buying sushi for dinner later. It’s the news reporter as vibes diviner.

Parsley tries to shore up his story by claiming to have spoken to “two senior sources familiar with the views of both Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan — who now runs the family media empire”. Even if those sources exists and are, in fact, senior rather than promoted in seniority to make the story sound better, it’s like asking two bees among the thousands in a hive to tell you what the queen is going to do next.

At any rate, the kremlinology around News Corp has been in full swing for months. In August 2023, Chris Blackhurst, the former editor of The Independent, now back plying his trade as a business columnist and sometime media commentator for the Evening Standard, wrote:

Word spread quickly around Westminster that Sir Keir Starmer was clearly in the ascendant by being invited to sit with Rupert Murdoch on his sofa at the mogul’s midsummer party. Seriously.

Well yes, what could be more serious than who the nonagenarian Antipodean asks to lounge with him on his hired soft furnishings? It’s like Dame Edna without the charm and a much larger helping of menace.

The obvious debate is over whether we are headed for a 1997-style Labour landslide — as the polls seem to predict — or a 1992-style shock Tory win — as the polls back then singularly failed to predict, pointing instead to a small Labour majority or a hung parliament. That a third, as yet unseen, eventuality might occur is too complicated for columnists to cover in a neat 800 words.

The quote from “one News Corp executive’ in Parsley’s story is worth exploring;

If you look at the polls right now, then you’re looking at a landslide for Labour. In years gone by titles like The Times and the Sun would have already gotten behind Starmer, but there remains [sic] some doubts over his and Labour’s ability to hit the home run. If the UK election was in May, then there would not be as much scepticism in the boardroom around Labour’s ability to balls this up. The bosses are inclined to back Labour, but it’s not a done deal because, like most people, we don’t expect the election to take place until around November. 

The history doesn’t actually support the claim that the Murdoch titles should have switched by now. In 1997, despite the infamous Tony ❤️ Rupert on Hayman Island in 1995, The Sun was still needling Blair at the start of that year, even as other Tory headbangers like The Daily Mail’s Paul Johnson had declared him “by instinct and conviction… and old-fashioned English patriot”.

I think it’s likely that the mood music coming out of News Corp — played by a band more jaded than even the most smack-addled old jazzer — is equivocal in the hope that Starmer will concede even more ground to the Murdoch papers. The Sun of ‘97 backed Blair because it deemed him suitably amenable to its demands — including having made a explicit promise not to join the Euro without a referendum in its pages — and sufficiently conservative in his instincts.

By the time of the ‘The Sun Backs Blair’ front page in March 1997, Labour had been leading in the polls for years. Murdoch backed the party he knew would win and his papers made sure to burnish the myth that the decision was a catalyst for rather than a consequence of New Labour’s popularity. The ‘92 result and The Sun’s supposed role in it became a scary story to whisper to Labour MPs after dark but it was no more real that tales of a hook-handed man scraping the roof of your car in the woods.

As early as 1994, when The Independent splashed on the results of the 1992 British Election Study, the Kingmaker Murdoch myth was being undermined. That research, based on interviews with 3,800 voters interviewed just after the 1992 election and a further group of 1,300 who’d been contacted in 1987 and interviewed again during the 1992 campaign, was conducted by 25 leading political scientists and found:

Among readers of pro-Tory tabloids, support for the Conservatives fell by three points during the election campaign, and it also fell by one point among readers of pro-Tory broadsheets. Just as perversely, support for the Tories rose slightly among readers of the pro-Labour Daily Mirror. It also rose among people who did not read any newspaper.

But Neil Kinnock said in his resignation speech that “the Conservative-supporting press has enabled the Conservative Party to win again” and The Sun turned Tory sycophancy about its supposed help into the “It was The Sun wot won it” front page. The idea of front pages and headlines being so decisive even appealed to hacks who had no connection to News Corp and that made the myth into a meme and an article of faith for generations of politicians.

In 2005, Trevor Kavanagh, The Sun’s then-political editor — who used his column this week to castigate Starmer for “yielding to mob rule” — was dispatched to Radio 4’s Today programme to warn:

We have given [Labour] a very fair wind over two full parliaments and I think that most of the public are a little disappointed, as are our readers, with the delivery.

The Sun went on to back Labour, with a smug, self-satisfied tone to its endorsement which it branded “our own historic verdict” and promoted with red smoke emerging from its office chimney in a parody of a papal conclave.

A quote from Piers Morgan in the run up to that decision is sadly cause to break out the ‘Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point’ meme (historical edition):

Rupert Murdoch will do what he always does at elections - back the party he thinks will win. And he hardly ever gets it wrong, so I suggest we all wait until The Sun declares its colours and go straight to the bookies.

The 2010 election broke Murdoch’s run of dead cert bets with The Sun endorsing the Conservative Party, led by David Cameron, who ended up in coalition after failing to win a working majority. In October 2009, just weeks after The Sun turned back to the Tories, its editor, Rebekah Brooks — now CEO of News UK — text Cameron, a family friend through her Etonian husband Charlie, writing: “Brilliant speech. I cried twice. Will love ‘working together’.”

Curiously the 2010 result did not provoke a ‘It was The Sun wot hung it’ headline but James Murdoch and Brooks did storm into The Independent’s offices before polling day to complain — in what The New York Times mimsily described as “expletive-laden” terms — about an ad from the rival paper which read:

“Rupert Murdoch won’t decide this election. You will.”

That was a dangerous simplification given the reality of our managed democracy under the first passed the post system but clinging on to the Murdoch myth is worse. And Starmer’s Labour does. Despite the huge decline in The Sun’s influence since 1997, the New Labour tribute acts running the party are so hung up on Roy Jenkins’ analogy for Blair’s task of getting Labour into power (“like a man carrying a priceless Ming vase across a highly polished floor”) that act like Murdoch’s ceramic smashing skills are undiminished.

Parsley’s i ‘exclusive’ further traffics that mythology, noting:

Over the past two decades, The Times has supported the party that ended up winning the most seats in each election.

That’s not the sign of someone who can predict storms; it’s indicative of a person who puts up their umbrella when they notice rain clouds.

What The Sun and The Times splash on in the months leading up to the election will play a role, along with the coverage from other newspapers, in influencing how the broadcasters shape their coverage but their endorsements, like those of their rivals, are little more than minor data points.

Rupert Murdoch turns 93 on March 11. Let’s give him the unwelcome birthday present of ceasing to believe that he is capable of Machiavellian electoral magic. He has huge influence but it’s predicated on that myth being sustained. The voice of the Great and Mighty Oz sounds terrifying but behind the curtain there’s just some bloke.

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