The misleading has begun already.

Splashed across yesterday's Sun front page were those ordinary voters who like the paper had decided that Labour's lost it. Alongside those who would blame the government if it rains was one Ros Altmann, a former adviser to Tony Blair and now a governor at the LSE. The Sun's report of her comments was thus:

I thought we had a chance to make a difference. But Brown wanted people to spend, spend, spend and thought that will generate growth.

That is not the way economics work. We needed radical change. But we got radical complications. We have the world's lowest state pension, but also the most complex. I am hopeful for David Cameron. I don't think he can make a worse mess of pensions. I can see why The Sun supports him.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the Tories, but Hugh Muir in the Grauniad Diary has more:

For sure, the economist has strong criticism of the pensions and economics polices pursued by Gordon. But there it ends. "What I said to them in answer to the specific question: 'Do I now support the Tories?' was 'No'," she tells us. "I said I don't know what their policies are so I can't support them. I said I can understand that some people no longer support Labour. There has been a bit of poetic licence here." Such is war.

And as could have been predicted, David Cameron today gives the paper an interview, unveiling 10 pledges, all naturally Sun-pleasing and many also naturally counter-productive or just wrong-headed. Reassessing every person on incapacity benefit? Stupidly wasteful in both time and cost terms. Replacing the Human Rights Act with a piss-poor "British" bill of rights substitute when the Tories almost certainly won't withdraw from the European Convention of Human Rights will just delay justice. And as for reforming inheritance tax to "encourage saving", words fail me. One new one, although not included on the 10 pledges itself, is that Cameron will institute a "war cabinet" on Afghanistan should the Tories come to power, something demanded by the Sun only a few weeks back. It doesn't seem to matter that such a cabinet would be pointless when it's the military and not the politicians who are helming the fighting, but then the Sun has always loved symbolism far more than well thought out and implementable strategy.

Don't know what you've got till it's gone.

They must have known it was coming, but the defection of the Sun back to the Tories after 12 years of "supporting" Labour has still quite clearly shook Labour. While the paper's representatives claim that it was yesterday's speech that finally confirmed they could no longer support the party, it's been obvious that the switch has been coming ever since last year's Conservative conference, when it gave David Cameron the sort of positive coverage he must have dreamed of. Since then the paper has been overwhelmingly anti-Labour without necessarily being anti-Brown. Some of the signs have been slight: calling Cameron "prime minister" when he was invited onto the paper's recently launched piss-poor online radio show was one, but the demand for an immediate general election earlier in the year was far less guarded.

The final nail in Brown's coffin was more than likely David Cameron's decision during his speech on quangos to focus almost solely on Ofcom, the regulator which is currently investigating whether Sky has an unfair stranglehold on the pay-TV market. With Cameron's culture secretary making menacing noises towards the BBC, which the Murdochs have all but declared war on due to the fact that their news websites simply can't compete with the far superior corporation offerings, it's clear that the Murdochs can now trust Cameron not to hurt their businesses just as they once trusted Tony Blair not to. That's the first condition of Murdochian support filled; the second is that you're going to win, and few are willing to bet anything other than a Conservative victory come next year.

It's still curious then that the paper has come out so decisively for the Tories when there is still plenty of time for anything to happen. The paper, after all, didn't swap sides until March in 97, when the Labour victory was already in the bag. As unlikely as it currently seems that there could yet be a fourth Labour term, it's not the first time that Murdoch's papers have got it wrong recently: the New York Post endorsed McCain last year. As a comfort, it's unlikely to warm the hearts of the Labour leadership.

More likely to do so is that the Sun is no longer the behemoth that it once was. While gaining the support of the Sun has always been second to gaining the support of Rupert Murdoch, the other major reason why Blair and Alastair Campbell entered into the original pact with the devil was, as Campbell said himself, he was never going to allow the Labour leader's head to be in a light-bulb on the front page on voting day again. While actual support for a political party from a newspaper on voting day has little to no impact whatsoever on the votes cast, it was the constant demonisation, undermining and ridicule which Kinnock was subject to, especially in the tabloid press, that helped to ensure he never became prime minister. The key difference today is that the Sun is no longer the attack dog it once was; while the paper ostensibly supported the Tories up until March 97, Kelvin MacKenzie famously told John Major after Black Wednesday that he had a bucket of shit and that the next morning he was going to pour it all over his head. MacKenzie might still be a columnist, and the likes of Bob Ainsworth might now be the person having a bucket of shit thrown over him repeatedly, but unlike back in 97, the media has now diversified to such an extent that the paper doesn't have the hold it once did. If anything, the paper has overplayed both its hand and its influence: it is still feared and respected mainly because of its former reputation rather than because of what it currently is.

One of the many repeated myths spouted today by those who deal in clichés is that the Sun follows its readers rather than getting its readers to follow it. Perhaps at times they get surprised by the strength of reaction, but this is a newspaper that wraps itself in what it thinks its readers want as defence against criticism, as a reassurance that it's what they want, and finally to tell them that because they're saying they want it, then it must be true. If anything the Sun is probably one of those newspapers which has the least loyal readership: the circulation of the broads, while falling, has not changed hugely since the advent of the internet; the tabloids, with the exception of the Mail and the Daily Star, have seen theirs fall massively. At one point the Sun dropped below the 3 million sales mark, triggering an almost panic-stricken price cut. Even with its lower circulation, the Daily Mail now almost certainly sets the agenda far more often than the Sun does.

This didn't of course stop the love affair between Blair and the paper, which remained to the advantage of both. For Blair, always determined to annoy the left of his party while reaching out to the cherished middle Britain, it served a double purpose. For the paper, it meant exclusives of even the most banal significance: Piers Morgan in his diaries was furious on a number of occasions about the access which the Sun got while the Mirror was shut out, most famously when someone (probably Cherie herself) told Rebekah Wade that the Blairs were having another baby, a story which Morgan believed was to be a Mirror exclusive. It meant obscene cooperation between the two, including policy stitch-ups involving asylum seekers. While New Labour and the Sun's politics may not look close at first examination, both shared, indeed share a contempt for civil liberties and an unaccountable lust for social authoritarianism, even if Blair could never come close to putting the paper's demands into action. On foreign policy, the two were inseparable: the Sun has always believed that might is right, and the fact that Blair dressed up his wars in the language of "liberal interventionism" only made them even more attractive.

Arguably, there have only been two occasions when Labour genuinely needed the support of the Murdoch press. Without the unstinting loyalty of all Murdoch's organs between the Iraq war and up to the end of the Hutton inquiry, there was still a possibility that Blair could have been forced out. In 2005 the paper all but abandoned the party except over Blair's wars. The real reason why remains Murdoch's certainty that the war was going to lead to oil at $20 a barrel, something that has not even come close to reality. The other occasion, is, well, now. Just when the party needs support, it loses it. This was the especially brutal part of the Sun's sudden but long in coming decision, knowing full well that it was not just kicking someone while they were down, it was the equivalent of a desecration of a corpse. Any hope that there might be the slightest boost from Brown's speech has been neutralised. David Cameron really must be delighted with the outcome, and again, this only highlights exactly why he's installed Andy Coulson as his very own Alastair Campbell.

As for the Sun's actual supposed reasons and dossier of "Labour failure", they're mostly so flimsy as to be not even worth bothering with. The dossier puts together often completely irrelevant data, and when it doesn't, it naturally cherry picks the information it relies on. On justice the paper absurdly highlights the cost of legal aid, as if the giving those who can't afford it access to briefs was a bad thing. It highlights the rise in alcohol tax receipts since 97 without pointing out this might be something to do with err, the rise in tax on it and not just increased sales. It compares the spending on police with the rise in deaths by stabbings, without mentioning that last year saw the lowest number of murders since the 80s. It also uses the 2007 figures rather than the 2008 ones, which saw a fall from 270 fatal stabbings to 252. Their data even directly contradicts some of the claims made in the leader, such as here:

But they FAILED on law and order, their mantra "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" becoming a national joke. Knife murders are soaring.

Their dossier shows that knife murders between 2006 and 2007 soared by, err, 1. In 2005 they were down to 219, then leapt in 2006 to 269, only two more than there were in 2002. As pointed out above, fatal stabbings were down to 252 in 2008, hence proving the editorial completely wrong. The weapon used should be irrelevant: it's that there are murders, not that one particular weapon is used. The idiocy continues:

Smirking criminals routinely walk free in the name of political correctness, while decent people live in a virtual police state of snooping cameras and petty officials empowered to spy and to punish.

The idea that criminals walk free in the name of political correctness is so ludicrous as to be not worth dealing with, while if there is a virtual police state, it was the Sun that helped create it. When has it ever opposed more CCTV cameras or more state powers? Answer: never.

Most disgracefully of all, Labour FAILED our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving them to die through chronic under-funding and the shambolic leadership of dismal Defence Secretaries like Bob Ainsworth.

Again, their dossier shows that spending on defence has risen year on year. The real people who failed our troops in Iraq were those who demanded they be sent in in the first place, but the Sun has never pointed its finger at itself. It wasn't those fighting them that left them to die, but then it also clearly wasn't Baby P's parents that killed him. It was instead the system:

Billions blown employing a useless layer of public service middle-managers like those who condemned Baby P to die.

Everything about this leader is backward looking, trying to turn the country back to halcyon days which never existed. Murdoch, despite his Australian-American citizenship, is a nationalist wherever his newspapers are. Loyal in China, neo-conservative in America and anti-Europe here, he somehow imagines that if only we were to spend more on defence and give the troops what they "need", they'd instantly "win". This doesn't of course apply to anyone else, but this is the kind of outlook we're dealing with. The leader concludes with:

If elected, Cameron must use the same energy and determination with which he reinvigorated the Tory Party to breathe new life into Britain.

That means genuine, radical change to encourage self-improvers, not wasting time on internal party wrangling or pandering to the forces of political correctness. It also means an honesty and transparency of Government that we have not seen for years.

We are still a great people and, put to the test, will respond to the challenges we face.

The Sun believes - and prays - that the Conservative leadership can put the great back into Great Britain.

Sub-Churchillian jingoism which turns the stomach. This is the relationship which Labour is crying and angry about losing today, to such an extent that it seems to have almost made Gordon Brown walk out on an interview. Labour never needed the Sun, but now it doesn't know what it had.

The Sun all but comes out for Cameron.

Roy Greenslade analyses whether today's Sun front page and their leader column, which calls for a general election, means that the paper has now switched its support to the Conservatives:

However, it's the sub-heading, accompanied by a picture of David Cameron, that catches the political eye: "Cameron: Only general election can end sleaze."

This would certainly imply that the paper has returned to the Conservative party fold it famously abandoned on 18 March 1997 with a front page headlined THE SUN BACKS BLAIR.

Even so, I'm not entirely convinced the paper has yet made up its mind to plump for the Tories. By contrast, it has clearly turned its back on Brown's Labour.

Its leading article states it unequivocally: "Voters have had enough of this government." It also says the government "is paralysed in the face of urgent and momentous challenges."

I imagine its readers would agree with one key paragraph:

"We are rudderless and adrift in dangerous seas with nobody at the helm, a crew of discredited MPs and a Speaker who has lost all authority."

Though there is a passing mention that people are angry with all the main parties, it eschews references to the gross misbehaviour by many Tory MPs. So that could imply a movement towards Cameron.

...

There will be many of you, of course, who think it irrelevant what The Sun (or Murdoch) says nowadays because you are convinced that its/his endorsement makes little if any difference to the outcome of an election.

I also happen to think it has no more than a marginal effect. What counts much more is what the paper says, day after day, week after week, in the months leading up to an election. (By "says", I don't mean the leaders, but the story choices plus their heavily angled headlines).

I am convinced that The Sun's relentless propaganda, denigrating a party's leaders and policies, gradually succeeds in influencing its audience (though proving that thesis has been beyond the talents of social scientists).

Reading The Sun every day (the things I do for this job, eh?), I am sure that its 3m regular buyers - and, say, 9m readers - will have gained an entirely negative view of Brown's premiership in the past year.

I should stress that Sun readers do not rely only on that paper. Its views undoubtedly chime with what many other papers are saying, what is broadcast on TV and radio and, of course, the reality that they confront in their daily lives.

Anyway, it means that The Sun has already accomplished its major ideological spadework. So I do not doubt for a moment that the overwhelming majority of its audience is imbued with a loathing for this government.

What the paper has yet to do is openly campaign for the Tories. It has been nervous about Cameron (as have the Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Telegraph). I get the feeling that it's on the brink of overcoming its nerves.

Given the mood in the country, I cannot imagine that The Sun will dare to adopt its agnostic 1974 stance. Murdoch may feel that's too great a risk to take.

One day, and it will be sooner rather than later, The Sun will endorse Dave. There will be echoes of 1997's time-for-a-change factor. This time around, there will be one significant difference from the Blair coronation: The Sun will be urging its readers to choose between the lesser of two evils.

I can't say I really disagree too much with his analysis, but I think he's missed the key point from the Sun's leader, which in effect does give the Tories the paper's full support:

Time is running out. In a year’s time, the EU will have signed and sealed the wretched Constitution.

A general election is your last chance to stop it. Eight out of 10 voters want a referendum. Labour promised one and then betrayed us.

If your candidate won’t support a vote, don’t give him yours.

Some Labour MPs might well support a vote, but the party itself certainly doesn't. The Liberal Democrats want to widen the question to Europe itself, which rules them out, leaving just the Conservatives, UKIP and the BNP as the parties that are promising a referendum, as well as a few on the far-left. Considering Murdoch isn't the slightest bit interested in any of them apart from the former, it's clear that the paper is endorsing the Tories, but not yet willing to seal the deal.

I already noted that the paper has more or less suggested that Cameron's the one to solve "Broken Britain". Greenslade is certainly right in that the paper has not, unlike others in the press, repeatedly kicked Brown. If anything, their failure to do so is perplexing: Murdoch and his acolytes especially hate the the new top rate of taxes which Brown and Darling are imposing. Why, when Blair is now long gone, is the paper if not its columnist still not putting the boot into New Labour? The answer is as Greenslade alludes to, Murdoch had yet to be convinced by Cameron. Seemingly, his performance last week has all but done so. It's still too far from a general election though, despite Cameron's histronics calling for one, so the paper is saving the switch until nearer the time. Be under no illusions though, the Sun is definitely now firmly back in the Conservatives' court.

The launch of SunTalk and Abu Qatada.

Today saw the launch of SunTalk, which is little more than the paper kindly stepping in and giving Jon Gaunt a job, after he was sadly sacked from TalkSport for calling a councillor a "Nazi". Because it only broadcasts on the internet and not over the actual airwaves or on DAB, this also handily means that it isn't regulated by Ofcom, instead by the rather weaker Press Complaints Commission. The Grauniad listened in so you didn't have to, and here are some of the choicer parts, with David Cameron being Gaunt's first guest:

10.34am: "Are you ready for some more calls, prime minister?" asks Gaunty. Is there a chance he might be a little right-leaning, do you think? Let's not get ahead of ourselves, says the Tory leader. "Oh come on, behave yourself," says Gaunt. "I bet you stand in front of the mirror wondering what it will be like to be prime minister?" Which reminds me a little of the Alan Partridge episode when he quizzes a distant royal: "Do you want to be Queen? Yes, she wants to be Queen!"

10.39am: It's SunSport's Ian McGarry. "Morning, prime minister." Crikey. He's at it as well. Have I missed something? So this is what they mean by the "home of free speech". If this was a radio station licensed and regulated by Ofcom, then someone might have put a call in by now.

...

10.53am: "For all those of you who say you hate me, it's a bumper day for you," says Gaunty. "There are four pages of me in the Sun. You can put it on the dartboard." "Use it to light your fire," suggests Cameron. In case you missed it earlier, SunTalk is here. Ah, we're onto immigration. "But there are a million illegals!" suggests Gaunty. "What are you going to do about them?" Ah, yes. "Illegals." Lovely noun.

11.07am: Another caller on Cameron: "He's got a true face, some fair eyes, and I would vote for him anytime." Which just about sums up the tone of the programme so far. This ToryTalk programme is a triumph.

...

11.44am: It's Sun political editors old and new, Trevor Kavanagh and George Pascoe-Watson. "Everyone knows that Labour is going to lose the next general election...." Hmm, can you feel a subliminal message here? For those listeners who were not already aware, it does not cost any money to send an email to SunTalk, says Gaunt. Phonecalls are charged at a local rate. "Not a premium rip off rate, as some stations charge, naming no names!" says Gaunty. Let it go, Jon, let it go.

11.45am: "The reason we want to be on the internet is because we want to be the home of free speech," explains Gaunty. "We are not regulated by Ofcom, we are regulated by the Press Complaints Commission. We don't want people to libel anyone or any of that nonsense, we want people to talk from the heart. If we were a traditional radio station that would not be possible." What he's trying to say, I think, is that you can go a little bit further on the web. But not TOO far, obviously. But how far is too far?

...

1.20pm: "We've put it together in six weeks. It sounds like it!" jokes Gaunt. And it does a bit. For a phone-in show there were only a handful of phonecalls worth listening to. Gaunt is a consummate radio pro and hurries things along - sometimes too quickly, in fact - and had a big name guest in the shape of David Cameron. But once the prime minister, as Gaunt insisted on calling him, exited stage right, the programme lost any sense of occasion, with one Sun columnist turning up after another. Some of them were better value than others - we needed more Ally Ross and Gordon Smart, less P&O travel guide, which felt like it lasted forever. I haven't checked my watch, but possibly it did. Gaunt's dedicated band of followers will enjoy it, I am sure, and if you agree with everything you read in the Sun, then you will appreciate most of the things you hear on SunTalk. But it could have done with a little bit more light and shade, a little bit of left with its right. Preaching to the converted can make for awfully boring radio. Strangely for a project that was so keen to big itself up as the "home of free speech" where people would "talk from the heart", SunTalk played it safe.

The Sun managed to get this sensational story out of Gaunt's interview:

DAVID Cameron today sensationally revealed he is planning TWO TERMS in power if he wins the next general election.

Politician in wanting to stay in government for more than one parliament shock!!!

Only slightly less seriously, there is something intensely humourous about having page 3 girls on the "radio", as the programme also had - Gaunt himself, after all, has a face for radio. Meanwhile, on actual radio, Chris Moyles had a 12-minute long "rant" about Saturday's front page Sun story which suggested that he was shortly to be removed from the Radio 1 breakfast, which indeed does seem dubious when you consider, however much you might personally dislike Moyles, he's been the most successful breakfast DJ on the station for years. Somehow you imagine that SunTalk isn't likely to threaten Radio 1's listening figures any time soon.

P.S.

There's an standard piece of nonsense in today's Sun regarding Abu Qatada, obviously briefed to them by a friendly "security source":

JAILED hate preacher Abu Qatada was linked to al-Qaeda for the first time yesterday — by one of the terror group’s own leaders.

Adil al-Abbab, revealed recently as Osama Bin Laden’s head of religious affairs in Saudi Arabia, said: “Free our prisoners and the prisoners of the Muslims. O Allah! Free Sheikh Abu Qatada.”

An indication of how important Adil al-Abbab is can be noted by searching Google for him - the Sun's story is the first result. The second helpfully links us to an English translation of al-Abbab's address, and he does indeed call for Allah to free Qatada. He also however calls for the freeing of plenty of others:

O Allah! Free our prisoners and the prisoners of the Muslims!

O Allah! Free Shiekh Dr. Omar Abdul‐Rahman! Sheikh Rifa’i Taha, Sheikh Sulaiman Al‐Ulwan, Sheikh Waleed Al‐Sinani, Sheikh Saeed Aal Al‐Za’eer, Sheikh Faris Aal Shuwayyil, Sheikh Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Sheikh Abu Hafs Al‐Mauritani.

O Allah! Free Sheikh Muhammad Al‐Fizazi, Sheikh Abu Qatadah Al‐Filistini, Sheikh Na‐sar Al‐Marsad, and all the other Muslims.

Most of these are indeed either jihadists or linked to al-Qaida; others Google turns up next to nothing for, and one, Sheikh Waleed Al-Sinani is mentioned in this Amnesty International briefing on Saudi Arabia as being a prisoner of conscience because of his political beliefs and views on human rights.

In any case, the idea that because some speaker no one has previously heard of calls for the release of Qatada instantly links him definitively to al-Qaida is absurd. It gets even more so, though:

Qatada, long suspected of being the network’s top European envoy, was respectfully referred to as “Sheikh” which denotes leadership.

Err, no, although a nice try. Sheikh literally means elder, but in this instance it is being used almost certainly in the sense of Qatada being a religious scholar. al-Qaida uses "sheikh" loosely in any case: they have long referred to Osama bin Laden as being a sheikh, although he has no formal religious training and no authority to issue fatwas, something that he was criticised for doing previously, including by those predisposed towards al-Qaida's brand of Islam.

A UK security source said of the web rant: “This is clearly an own goal.

“These calls for his freedom from a senior al-Qaeda figure end any doubt about his significance to Bin Laden.”

Of course. Presumably bin Laden feels the same about Al-Sinani as well then? The problem with Qatada is that he is enigmatic, as posts over on my place have repeatedly made clear. He probably is an Islamic extremist, but whether he actually supports al-Qaida or not is another matter entirely. This tainting by association is very weak stuff.

Gently stirring

The Sun is gently stirring things for the Conservatives.

Spectator Coffee House:

Tucked away in the Whip column of The Sun is this item:

“Now senior Tories are aghast at rumours that David Cameron was rubbishing them during a private dinner recently. He is said to have told a pal: “I’ve got six or seven people in the Shadow Cabinet capable of working in the government. The rest are useless.”

The way—and where—The Sun has reported this story suggests it is not totally confident in it.

The Sun's take on the pre-budget report.

If you want an indication of how stupid the Sun imagines its readers are, then you could do worse than see them again turning to Thunderbirds in order to explain the economics of yesterday's pre-budget report, capitals and bold used throughout.

We're not especially interested in that though, more in whether the PBR has shifted the Sun further from its embrace of New Labour towards the Conservatives, as has seemed evident since their praise for David Cameron's piss-poor conference speech.

Their leader, headlined the "death of New Labour", is perhaps not as critical as you may have expected:

"BRITAIN is apparently so close to meltdown that the nation must be plunged deeper into the red to avoid catastrophe.

Gordon Brown says it is not his fault that we are worst placed in the Western world to weather this storm.

We must blame America’s chaotic mortgage crisis — not our own overblown housing bubble or badly-run banks.

And it will take seven bitter years before we get our heads above water again.

But the Prime Minister cannot wash his hands of responsibility like that.

Yes, the whole world is suffering.

But Britain’s special weakness is, at least in part, down to Labour’s reckless 12-year spending spree on bloated and inefficient public services.

...

But make no mistake. It marked the death of New Labour.

In one emergency splurge, a beaming Mr Brown reverted to Old Labour’s natural big government tendency to big government tax, spend and borrow.

The clue is in the tax changes.

All the CUTS are temporary.

All the RISES are permanent.

Britain is once again a high tax economy. VAT will shoot back to 17.5 per cent after 13 months, with sharp hikes in petrol, booze and cigarette prices.

But the new 45p rate for high earners will remain — if Labour stays in power.

In hard times, few would argue against the wealthy paying their whack.

But who would bet this new rate, welcomed ecstatically by Labour MPs, will stay at 45p.

We are back on the slippery slope to the 1970s.

Other changes, including higher National Insurance and personal allowances, will hurt low and middle earners — and small business.

Yesterday, we saw the battle lines drawn for the next election.

If Gordon Brown succeeds he may well lead Labour to a fourth term.

If he fails — as Shadow Chancellor George Osborne warned — he will have mortgaged our future in an unforgivably reckless Budget.

It's not the job of the Sun to offer alternatives, but it's instructive here to note that it doesn't suggest a single different policy to the ones which Labour are pursuing. The Tories too, only get the one reference, and that's to George Osborne, who also offered few alternatives yesterday. If this truly is the death of New Labour, and that they have had to, out of desperation raise income tax, isn't really indicative of the party being over, then the Sun isn't as upset as you might expect it to be. Our bailouts, likewise, are small beer compared to those in the US, Rupert Murdoch's adopted home, where another $800bn has just been announced by the Fed, nearly 2 months before Barack Obama gets to the White House to introduce his own stimulus. For all the meetings and sucking up towards Cameron, Murdoch will doubtless expect him to come up with some sort of plan before he puts all of his eggs firmly in one basket. New Labour isn't yet dead, and neither is the pact the party has had with the Sun.

Cameron and Murdoch sitting in a tree....

Courtesy Beau Bo D'or

David Cameron has never seen a bandwagon which he hasn't wanted to jump on. Accordingly, he just couldn't contain his thoughts on the whole Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand/Andrew Sachs debacle, and following the News of the Screws' feeble expose on BBC executive pay, he put pen to paper. Which newspaper though quickly decided his scribblings were worthy of publication? Why, that would be the Sun.

Just a couple of weeks ago after all we learned that Cameron had, thanks to Murdoch's son-in-law, visited Rupert himself on his yacht prior to jetting off on holiday. Whilst registering this in the members interests, he somehow forgot to mention he was going to see Murdoch himself. Still, these things can slip the memory.

If there was some sort of deal done on the floating fortress between Murdoch and Cameron, and the Sun's apparent swift praise for Cameron's conference speech suggests there may well have been, then Cameron's article isn't completely overwhelming in its sycophancy towards Murdoch's interests. He is if anything perhaps overly defensive of the BBC, including its current methods of funding, and whilst paying lip service to the idea that the corporation is biased, you have to wonder if his heart's fully in it.

One of the big points he makes though is over the pay issue, and how Mark Thompson, the BBC's director general, earns over £800,000 a year. As I point out in a somewhat extended version of this post, this is less than his ITV and Channel 4 equivalents earn by quite some margin. How much though, for example, is Rebekah Wade paid? Answer: we don't know, as the Sun is one of the few newspapers which doesn't have its pay deals fully open to scrutiny, unlike the Daily Mail, where Paul Dacre has previously earned well over a £1 million for his stewardship of the paper. Wade is reputed to earn less, but is it less than Thompson? Perhaps a clue is provided by how much James Murdoch, Rupe's son, is paid by BSkyB (PDF). In 2008 he received roughly £1,357,000, down from almost £3 million the year before after he stepped down from being CEO to become a non-executive chairman, having effectively taken over from his father his role as head of News Corp in Europe, or at least in this country.

The other obvious point to make is that the BBC stands in the way of Murdoch's complete domination of the media in this country, hence why it so loathes the corporation and is attacked by Murdoch's interests at every opportunity. For Cameron to have received Murdoch's apparent backing, he will have had to have guaranteed to not harm Murdoch's business interests, and also to be prepared to intervene on Murdoch's behalf if necessary, as it was revealed at the weekend Blair did. While Cameron will then have not gone anywhere near as far as Murdoch would have liked him to, Cameron still can't burn his bridges with the corporation until he is in a position where it won't make any further difference. Today's article will almost certainly be a further step towards Cameron gaining the affections of one of the few people who really matter, and the fact that he isn't even a British citizen and does all he can to pay as little tax in this country as possible doesn't matter one jot.

The day the Sun went back to the Tories?

Incredibly positive coverage of Cameron's speech, not just on the front page, but also in the paper. Perhaps this, from the report on the speech, was key:

"Everything in Mr Cameron’s 64-minute speech smacked of a Thatcherite agenda, from strong defence to an end to the PC culture."

About the only note of criticism is from "5 Daves" which the paper called upon to comment on the speech.

Key though, as always, is the Sun's leader (url may well change):

"DAVID Cameron finally stood up yesterday and showed what he is made of.

Gone was the show pony politician. In his place emerged a tough leader, a young but credible statesman with potent ideas for rebuilding our nation.

Mr Cameron said the words his party wanted to hear. He echoed their hero, Margaret Thatcher, calling for “strong defence, sound money and the rule of law”.

...

But it will be the reaction of Sun readers that counts in the end.

This speech could have been lifted straight from a Sun editorial — from backing Our Boys on the front-line to mending Britain’s broken society.

Our readers want more classroom discipline, support for families and tax help for married couples. "

The perfect example of the Sun telling its readers what they want, when in fact, as the preceding sentence so vividly illustrates, this in what the Sun wants.

"A Tory government will call a referendum on the hated EU Constitution. It will end the abuse of the EU Human Rights Act and replace it with a sensible bill of rights."

How many times has the Sun repeatedly told this bare-faced lie? The Human Rights Act and the European Convention of Human Rights, on which it is based, have nothing to do with the European Union, and pre-dates our joining of the EEC, the fore-runner of the EU, by 23 years. One cannot wait to see what a "sensible" bill of rights will contain that the "abusive" HRA with its quaint rights to life, a fair trial, liberty and security, expression and marriage doesn't.

In conclusion:

"This was a powerful, coherent speech, addressing hard economic questions with sensible solutions.

Far from looking like a “novice”, Mr Cameron delivered the most confident and compelling speech of the political season.

“You can’t PROVE you are ready to be Prime Minister — it would be arrogant to pretend you can,” said Mr Cameron.

And he’s right. The Tory Party has come a long way under his leadership. There is much still to be done.

But with this nail-hammering performance, he showed he is more than qualified to give it a try."

Cameron has then passed the Sun, or rather, the Murdoch test: by so adopting their own editorial line, it's clear that he poses no threat to them or to Murdoch's business interests, hence he is now qualified to potentially be our prime minister. Those who object that one person, indeed, an Australian American, has such power to decide who is and isn't fit for government in the United Kingdom, ought to be worried: the last time this happened we were lumbered with Tony Blair for 10 years.