As wearily and oft predicted, Rupert Murdoch and the Sun have swung their substantial weight and 10 million daily readers behind Tony Blair.This endorsement is not unexpected but very welcome among senior Labour politicians. It does however give the lie to the suggestion that the Sun's Trevor Kavanagh is one of the most powerful journalists in Britain (a ranking mistake I freely admit we made in last year's MediaGuardian Power 100). Kavanagh's leaning towards the Conservatives has yielded absolutely nothing in terms of his paper's leader line, although one might say from the recent Sun front pages which have savaged deputy prime minister John Prescott over illegal Gypsy and Traveller encampments and the persistent drum beating on immigration mean it is a Tory paper in all other respects.
But what now for us navel-gazing Murdoch-watchers? Well, there is the very interesting issue of the leadership of New Labour post Tony Blair. Persistant rumours that Murdoch has recently swung away from Gordon Brown on the grounds that he might turn out to be a dangerous high-taxing lefty seem to be backed by the attitude of Irwin Stelzer, Murdoch's chief economic thinker. Stelzer has recently become temperedly critical of Brown's approach, and may signal a more profound anti-Brown swing from the top of News Corp. Or, perhaps it is a clever piece of reverse psychology on Murdoch's part - distancing from Brown in order to make him more appealing to the party faithful ... but thinking like this is a short path to temporary madness ...
