The Sun newspaper backs Labour in blow to Rishi Sunak

Jacob Phillips
·2-min read
(The Sun)
(The Sun)

The Sun newspaper has backed Labour at the General Election providing a huge blow to Rishi Sunak’s chances.

The tabloid has said “It’s time for a new manager” hours before Britain is set to go to the polls.

The paper also famously backed Tony Blair’s Labour Party when he won a landslide victory in 1997, switching sides after more than 20 years of unswerving support for the Tory party.It has previously backed Tory candidates for the past 15 years helping David Cameron and Theresa May enter Downing Street.

The Rupert Murdoch-owned paper wrote: It’s time for change. The insurmountable problem faced by the (Conservatives) is that - over the course of 14 often chaotic years - they have become a divided rabble, more interested in fighting themselves than running the country.

“By the time Rishi Sunak moved into No10, Britain had had five Prime Ministers in just 12 years. In 2022 alone, there were four Home Secretaries, four Chancellors, and five Education Secretaries.

“All this upheaval, backstabbing and mayhem came at a price.”

It added: "There are still plenty of concerns about Labour ... But, by dragging his party back to the centre ground of British politics for the first time since Tony Blair was in No. 10, Sir Keir has won the right to take charge."

Earlier on Wednesday the Evening Standard also endorsed Sir Keir’s Labour Party, joining the Financial Times and the Sunday Times in backing the opposition party.

(Evening Standard)
(Evening Standard)

The Daily Mirror and the Guardian have also endorsed Labour, while the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph have backed the Conservatives.

The Economist, a pro-business weekly magazine, has thrown its weight behind Labour.

The Sun boasts a record of backing winners in elections.

The tabloid, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp media empire, famously crowed "It was the Sun wot won it" in 1992, claiming its support had swayed 10 million readers to back John Major's Conservatives to an unexpected election victory.

It switched its support to Labour before Blair led the party to the first of three successive election victories in 1997.

In 2009, The Sun turned away from the Labour Party after more than a decade of support and said it would support David Cameron's Conservatives under the headline: "Labour's Lost It". Labour lost the 2010 general election.

  • Up next
  • Up next
  • Up next
  • Up next

Latest stories

  • Conservatives Routed in Worst Election Result for 200 Years

    LONDON—The Conservatives, the world’s winningest political party, were booted out of power in dramatic style on Thursday after 14 years of chaotic and divisive rule.The Labour Party had secured a landslide victory, ending an era of Conservative rule over Britain that stretches back to 2010; the year that the iPad and Instagram were launched and Lady Gaga wore that meat dress to the MTV music awards.In that time, the Conservatives have cycled through five leaders, each of them dragging the party

  • The world must prepare for President Michelle Obama

    The 2024 US Presidential race intensifies. Speculation abounds over potential replacements for President Joe Biden amid increasing pressure from his party and the media to step aside after a jaw-dropping, catastrophic debate against Donald Trump last week. Among the names circulating, a game-changer is emerging: Michelle Obama. Could this be America’s worst nightmare?

  • Embattled Biden makes latest gaffe saying he’s the ‘first Black woman to serve with a Black president’

    President’s July 4 blunder comes as he desperately tries to claw back confidence among voters and party members after last week’s debate flop

  • Opinion: What Britain’s first Asian prime minister meant to my family

    The defeat of the Conservative Party in the UK election ends Rishi Sunak’s two-year premiership. Does it also sour the story of Britain’s first Asian prime minister, asks Sunder Katwala.

  • How Obama mentored the new UK prime minister to help him tell his story

    The leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, has been mentored by Barack Obama. The relationship is likely to continue if Starmer wins the UK election.

  • Voices: Tory downfall: The 9 reasons it has all gone wrong for Rishi Sunak

    A series of world events, poor decisions and fatal gaffes conspired to see Rishi Sunak lead the Tories to the worst electoral defeat in his party’s 346-year history

  • Putrajaya submits diplomatic protest note to UN rejecting Manila’s bid to reclaim Sabah after Paris court rule

    Malaysia submits diplomatic note to UN Secretary-General António Guterres rejecting the Philippines’ claim to Sabah r...

  • Beijing is laughing at the West’s weakness

    Russian aggression in Ukraine poses a threat to world peace and stability. China provides material support for Russia’s actions. All this is entirely clear. In Beijing, immediately after a meeting with Xi Jinping in April this year, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that “Russia would struggle to sustain its assault on Ukraine without China’s support”. This included selling huge quantities of machine tools and micro-electronics that would be used in the Russian defence industry.

  • Van Jones Reveals ‘Behind The Scenes’ Moves That Could End Biden Campaign

    The CNN commentator detailed the “big conversation” taking place right now among Democratic insiders.

  • Tory infighting begins as Rishi Sunak leads party to record-breaking defeat

    Jacob Rees-Mogg, Grant Shapps and Suella Braverman are among senior Tories with scathing assessments of party leadership

  • Zelensky U-turns as he invites Russia to attend peace summit without giving up land

    Volodymyr Zelensky has invited Russia to the next peace summit despite previously saying it could only join if it relinquished land in Ukraine.

  • Victoria Starmer: Britain's 'reluctant' new first lady

    Sir Keir Starmer’s wife of 17 years has been largely absent from the campaign trial and isn’t at all keen on moving into No10. From her political roots to their unlikely meeting, Katie Strick charts the life of the PM’s fiercely private other half

  • Here’s what would happen if Biden were to drop out of the presidential race

    CNN’s Brian Todd explains the process for picking a new Democratic presidential nominee, should President Biden decide to end his bid for reelection

  • Seven moments over 14 years that destroyed the Conservative government

    The Tories have lost the 2024 general election with the worst results in the party's history. Here are the key moments that brought them down.

  • Goodbye, Galloway. This was a triumph for Israel

    British politics has hardly covered itself in glory in recent years. After the shame of the Corbyn years was punctured by the glorious Tory victory of 2019, we were subjected to a veritable gallery of disgrace: soaring immigration, Covid authoritarianism, Partygate, the Truss-Kwarteng interregnum, Gaza fanaticism. But the true nadir was the election of George Galloway in Rochdale.

  • 9 out of 10 voters say there are important differences between Biden and Trump. Here’s what they see as the biggest ones

    If there’s one thing that American voters overwhelmingly agree on, it’s that this year’s presidential election presents a stark choice. In the latest CNN poll by SSRS, 91% of registered voters say they see important differences between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, dwarfing even the 77% of voters who said last fall that there were significant divides between the Democratic and Republican parties. Even among the so-called “double haters” – those with unfavorable views of

  • Lebanon's Hezbollah rains 200 rockets on Israel as Gaza war rages

    Lebanon's Hezbollah launched more than 200 rockets and drones at Israeli army positions on Thursday, escalating tensions between the two adversaries amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.After months of deadlocked Gaza ceasefire efforts, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he agreed to send a delegation for talks aimed at securing the release of hostages seized in Hamas's October 7 attack that sparked the war.The announcement, which came a day after Hamas said it had "ideas" on halting the nearly nine-month conflict, followed a phone call between Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden."The leaders discussed the recent response received from Hamas" and "the President welcomed the Prime Minister's decision to authorise his negotiators to engage with US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators in an effort to close out the deal," the White House said.Israel launched a military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip on October 7, in response to an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist militant group on its territory.The next day Hezbollah, in support of its ally Hamas, opened a front on Israel's northern border with Lebanon, and the two sides have since exchanged near-daily cross-border fire.Hezbollah said it fired more than 200 rockets and "explosive drones" at army positions in northern Israel and the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights in retaliation for an Israeli strike that killed one of the Iran-backed group's commanders.Air raid sirens blared across northern Israel in the morning, and an AFP correspondent witnessed rockets crossing the frontier that were mostly intercepted by Israeli air defences but sparked wildfires.A military source said later a soldier was killed by a rocket fired into northern Israel.- Fighting in Gaza City -The Gaza war broke out after Hamas's October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the army says are dead.In response, Netanyahu vowed to "crush" Hamas and Israel's military launched an offensive that has killed at least 38,011 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.Gaza's civil defence agency said seven people were killed Thursday in Israeli strikes, including five in a school in Gaza City, in the north of the besieged territory.Fighting raged in the city's Shujaiya neighbourhood and in Rafah, on the southern border with Egypt, where an Israeli evacuation order raised fears of a major new offensive.Since the order was issued on Monday, tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled eastern areas of Rafah and nearby Khan Yunis.The United Nations says 1.9 million people are thought to be displaced in Gaza, and that around nine in every 10 people in the territory have been uprooted at least once since the war broke out."Behind these numbers, there are people... that have fears and grievances. And they had probably dreams and hopes; the less and less, I fear today, unfortunately," said Andrea De Domenico, head of the UN humanitarian office in the Palestinian territories."People who in the last nine months have been moved around like pawns in a board game."- Evacuation order -The United Nations says up to 250,000 people were affected by Israel's order to evacuate 117 square kilometres (45 square miles) -- equivalent to one-third of Gaza's territory.The Israel-Hezbollah border clashes have killed at least 496 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including 95 civilians, according to an AFP tally.Israeli authorities say at least 16 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed on their side of the UN-patrolled border.The Gaza war at the heart of the violence has meanwhile raged on, with gun battles, air strikes and shelling rocking Gaza City for an eight straight day.Israeli troops "destroyed tunnel routes in the area and eliminated dozens of terrorists in close-quarters combat with tank fire, and in aerial strikes," the military said.- 'Maelstrom of human misery' -Israel has faced an international outcry over the soaring civilian death toll, punishing siege and mass destruction in Gaza.The UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, this week called for an end to the "maelstrom of human misery".Netanyahu has insisted Israel will destroy Hamas and bring home the remaining hostages.Biden, under growing domestic pressure over Washington's support for Israel, in late May outlined a roadmap for a six-week truce and exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.There has been little progress since, but Hamas said Wednesday it was communicating with officials in Qatar and Egypt as well as Turkey with an eye to ending the conflict.Hamas said its Qatar-based political chief Ismail Haniyeh had "made contact with the mediator brothers in Qatar and Egypt about the ideas that the movement is discussing with them with the aim of reaching an agreement".Netanyahu's office said Wednesday that "Israel is evaluating the (Hamas) remarks and will convey its reply to the mediators".The main stumbling block so far has been Hamas's demand for a permanent end to the fighting, which Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners strongly reject.burs-dv/kir

  • Russia is using devastating 'meat assault' attacks to find out where Ukraine's firepower is hidden: report

    Russia is throwing troops into high-casualty attacks for marginal tactical gains.

  • Sunak ‘sorry’ for election disaster and declares resignation

    Rishi Sunak has apologised after leading the Conservatives to their worst ever election result as a Labour landslide swept Sir Keir Starmer to No 10. The outgoing prime minister said he would quit as Tory leader once arrangements are in place to choose his successor, potentially triggering another round of Conservative infighting as MPs scramble to replace him. In a statement outside No 10, Mr Sunak said: “I will shortly be seeing His Majesty the King to offer my resignation as prime minister. H.

  • As Europe turns right, why has a center-left party won by a landslide in the UK?

    The United Kingdom’s decision to hand the center-left Labour Party a parliamentary majority comes at the same time Europe is broadly in the grip of what some call a right-wing populist surge.