Murdoch's Sun turns against British PM
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'Labour's lost it: after 12 long years in power, this government has lost its way.' (AFP: Carl de Souza)
Britain's biggest-selling tabloid newspaper, The Sun, has lambasted Prime Minister Gordon Brown and thrown its support behind the Conservative opposition less than eight months before the country's general election.
The Sun newspaper's front page screams: "Labour's lost it: after 12 long years in power, this government has lost its way."
The editorial read, "Now it's lost the Sun's support, too".
Britain's leading tabloid sells more than 3 million copies a day but Mr Brown says he does not think The Sun will influence voters.
"The British people will decide the election, not a newspaper, and I think people really want newspapers to report news - and they expect them to do so," he said.
The newspaper's powerful proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, also owns The Times of London and The News Of the World as well as controlling the pay television group British Sky Broadcasting.
The Sun has a record of backing winners in elections. It switched its support to Labour before Tony Blair led the party to the first of three successive election victories in 1997.
"What this is signalling is that they (The Sun) think their readers have turned, just as in 1996 when they switched support to Blair, a similar time out from the election," Ivor Gaber, professor of political campaigning and reporting at London's City University, said.
"They weren't saying 'we suddenly think New Labour is good', they were saying 'we know where our readers are at', and no newspaper likes to be behind its readers."
-ABC/Reuters
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