Important?

The Sun are now officially a conservative paper. It hasn't exactly been a secret what with John Gaunt and his other twat columnist stable mates refering to David Cameron as "our next PM " for the last six months, but at least it's official now.

Labour have imploded as a party ripping up copies of the Sun mid-conference and generally acting like a jilted lover screaming "We never loved you anyway!" whilst weeping as they stare into the void of free publicity and vote collecting that Britian's most bought daily guarantees. Is it really that important? Does the Sun hold the key to the election? You would think that it is the policies of the parties that command peoples votes, not the papers they read but perhaps this isn't the case.

A major turning point in the modernisation of the Labour party was gaining the Sun's support. It was Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell's primary concern in the spin war before the landmark 1997 election. For the first time they had the complete support of the most read British paper and most importantly the paper with the broadest cross section of readers. It was from there that they disseminated the spin and propaganda that helped attract the vital floating voters. It is listed as one of the turning points that brought them such a convincing win in 1997 and something that they have relied on heavily ever since. Where else can they turn? The Express and The Mail want nothing more than a Tory return to office (apart from maybe Diana's death to be proven as a MI5 conspiracy), The Telegraph has more chance of supporting the BNP than Labour, everyone knows that the Guardian are left leaning so it's pretty inevitable and know one gives a fuck what the Star, the Sport or the Mirror think.

So perhaps it is important, perhaps it signals a final nail in the coffin for New Labour and Gordon Brown. Or perhaps the people of Britain still prefer to make their own minds up, perhaps they rather making informed opinions based on their moral codes and values. Worryingly I suspect it could be the former.