In today's Guardian Seumas Milne assesses the Sun's repudiation of Labour. He describes Blair's mid-90's courting of the Murdoch empire as a 'calculated demonstration that the appeasement of corporate muscle and rightwing populism would be at the heart of New Labour politics'.
The withdrawal of support by the Sun is not seen as critical to Labour's prospects 'in a much more fragmented media world, the tabloids' grip is weakening. The Sun's support for Labour has long been little more than nominal, and rarely extended to its popular policies, such as the minimum wage – in contrast to the government's most catastrophic and vote-losing commitment: the Iraq war. The defection of the Sun could even now become a kind of a liberation for Labour politicians, who would otherwise have spent months fruitlessly wooing the Murdoch press with counterproductive concessions.'
Milne's excellent analysis of the New Labour years and the potential appeal of Gordon Brown's new social policy prospectus concludes: 'in Britain, despite the Tory lead, there has been little evidence of any shift to the right in public opinion. If Labour goes down to defeat next year, it will not be the result of the slow, cautious social democratic moves the government has finally taken in the aftermath of the crisis. It will be because it failed to take so many of them in the previous 11 years – preferring instead the Faustian pact New Labour made with the Murdochs of the financial and corporate ascendancy.'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/30/new-labour-rupert-murdoch
