ANDY Burnham has been urged not to cosy up to The Sun newspaper as he prepares to become the UK’s next prime minister.
The Makerfield MP has been warned to expect a “challenge” from Liverpool MPs if he takes the same approach to the tabloid as his predecessor.
The Sun has been boycotted in the city since it smeared the victims of the Hillsborough disaster, where 96 Liverpool fans were killed in a crush at the Sheffield football stadium.
Andrew Devine is counted by his family and many others as the 97th victim, though he died 32 years after, because a coroner ruled he had been "unlawfully killed" after sustaining life-changing injuries as a result of the disaster.
Prime ministers have often been keen to court the newspaper, seeing it as a highly influential publication.
The Sun has endorsed the winning or largest party in the 13 general elections since 1974. Its Scottish edition backed the SNP in the Westminster elections in 2015 and 2017, made no endorsement in 2019 and backed Labour in 2024.
But Burnham has been urged to buck the trend and shun the paper.
Asked what his approach to The Sun should be, Liverpool Riverside MP Kim Johnson told the Sunday National: “I've not heard what his approach is, but if it is to support the Scum newspaper, he will have a challenge from Liverpool MPs.”
Many people from Liverpool avoid using the paper’s real name, preferring instead “the Scum” or “The S*n” and it is not widely sold in the city.
Paula Barker, the Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, added: “I think Andy fully understands the strength of feeling in my city towards that certain publication.
“He has worked tirelessly with the Hillsborough families and has demonstrated his commitment to the cause. I hope he carries that knowledge with him in any future interactions.”
During his leadership bid, outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer distanced himself from the paper, saying: “I certainly won’t be giving any interviews to The Sun during the course of this campaign.”
After he became Labour leader, he reversed this stance, and wrote articles for the paper.
Defending this shift at the time, Starmer said: “I have to make sure that what we have to say is communicated to as many people as possible in the time that we've got available and that is why I am very happy to work with The Sun, to write for The Sun, to do interviews with The Sun.”
The Sun is shunned in Liverpool after it ran a front page story four days after the Hillsborough disaster under the headline: “The Truth”.
The story included claims from police officers and Tory MP Irvine Patnick that Liverpool fans caught up in the deadly crush had pickpocketed their fellow supporters, urinated on police officers and “beat up [a] PC giving [the] kiss of life”.
The story had been sourced from a news agency, Whites Press Agency, a fact that Kelvin MacKenzie, the editor who ordered the front page, has relied upon in his defence in the years since.
It included Patnick’s account of showing the then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher around the scene of the disaster, and his claims that the “mayhem” was “caused by drunks” and that policemen had told him they were “hampered, harassed, punched and kicked”.
MacKenzie subsequently apologised for the front page and the paper has since attempted to make amends but feelings against it remain strong in Liverpool.
The paper’s case has not been helped by MacKenzie later walking back his apology, admitting he had only said sorry on the orders of The Sun’s proprietor Rupert Murdoch.
Appearing on a BBC Question Time panel in 2007, around 18 years after the disaster, MacKenzie confirmed a report which claimed he had privately confessed that he only apologised under duress.
Host David Dimbleby asked the former editor: “When you were editor of The Sun you've said you apologised to Liverpool because you were told to by Murdoch and you didn't mean it.”
After he confirmed that was the case, MacKenzie lashed out at the families affected saying they were looking for someone to blame and stuck by one part of the story which alleged that the stadium was unsafe because some Liverpool fans had entered without tickets.
He said: “They are angry with me, they want to find somebody who actually caused the disaster. That's the issue. There was one aspect I do believe and that was the fans didn't have the tickets.”
Asked about the allegations that Liverpool fans stole from their deceased fellow supporters and urinated on the police, MacKenzie said: “Those allegations came from a Liverpool news agency and came from a Tory MP and an unnamed senior police officer.”
He added: "I stand by the ticketless aspect. I don't know about whether they urinated on them and I don't know whether they stole their wallets."
The Sun has tried to heal the wounds it caused but to little success. In 2004, the paper printed a full-page apology for the scandal, calling the infamous front page the “most terrible mistake” in its history.
Liverpool’s long-running boycott of the paper is so enduring it is even credited with shaping the political views of people who live there. People in Merseyside were estimated to be 11% less Eurosceptic than elsewhere, according to a 2019 study by researchers at the London School of Economics.
They found that the boycott “might have decreased the Leave vote share in Merseyside in the 2016 EU referendum”.
Burnham has credited the barracking he got from the crowd at Anfield in 2009 when he was culture secretary as a turning point in his political career.
He was met with boos and jeers during his speech at a memorial service for those killed, which Burnham subsequently said inspired him to fight for justice for the victims.
Speaking later, the former Greater Manchester mayor said: “I’d got to a point where I wasn’t going to be the yes man anymore.”
Burnham’s team were approached for comment. News UK, the publisher of The Sun, was approached for comment.
