Andy Burnham’s refusal to give an interview to the Sun has not gone down well with - no prize for guessing - the Sun.
The Labour leadership contender said on a BBC programme he would not do favours for papers attacking him or Labour.
Nor had he, a Liverpool MP, forgiven the Sun for its infamous coverage of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.
The response in today’s Sun was a page 2 article with a picture of Burnham posing in a taxi with a Sun logo while giving the paper an interview during the 2010 Labour leadership contest.
The headline over the embarrassing picture said “Sunburnt: Is two-faced Burnham the most hypocritical politician in Britain?”
And the paper also ran a leading article accusing Burnham of arrogance, pettiness and showing contempt for the Sun’s millions of readers — “the very sort of working people he claims to stand up for”. It said:
“As far as he’s concerned, if you read the Sun you just don’t matter. He’s much more interested in winning the backing of the faithful Leftie few and seizing the Labour party crown whatever the consequences.
That’s astonishing at a time when Labour so clearly needs to reinvent itself and reach out to voters who deserted them in droves at the election.
It says much that he considers addressing the electorate through a national newspaper a ‘favour’ in the first place.
Burnham shows every sign he would repeat the mistakes of hopeless predecessor Ed Miliband”.
In its news story, the paper quotes Burnham’s Labour colleague, shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt, as telling the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that he wouldn’t take similar stand against the Sun.
He said. “We need to reach out to those votes. We need as many friends as possible”.
The Sun has not offered official support to any of the four candidates for the Labour leadership, the other three being Jeremy Corbyn, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall. But it has previously referred to Kendall as “the only prayer [the party] have”.
Sources: BBC/The Sun (1) and (2)/Liverpool Echo
