It was us wot made the decision

It was a cringingly funny moment on BBC this morning when Sun associate editor Trevor Kavanagh found himself evading the question put directly to him over whether or not the paper's decision to dump Labour had actually come from the proprietor. The response, geared to the ratio between his remaining mortgage balance and personal credibility, was that the shift in support "would obviously have involved the owner". Politicians of all persuasions must have watched the scene with a sense of deep satisfaction and a fleeting spasm of empathy - especially when his mobile phone went off on live TV.

But what will Gordon Brown's contemporaries make of his baloney brave reactive assertion that newspapers don’t decide elections anymore? Having Murdoch in your camp has always been a good thing in the past, if only for the additional free publicity, but does Fortress Wapping carry the same clout as it once did? Coming on another bad news day for 'traditional' mediums that on-line advertising expenditure has overtaken its broadcast equivalent, it might be possible that the PM has made another one of his cogent but rather badly expressed points. However it is all probably too late to make a difference anyway.

A reality check will show that News Corporation is simply performing the same re-positioning act that thousands of other firms, who use the same analysts, are doing a lot more subtly in readiness for a change at Downing Street. It is a essentially a commercial move and probably more damaging in its nature as a result. As for newspapers influencing political choice, the only publication really capable of making that particular claim these days is the Telegraph.

Apologies for the several re-writes of this an previous posts.
We are struggling just a bit with the new Blogger editing commands which has allowed incomplete versions to get published in error.