Andy Burnham Defies The Sun

The Murdoch empire is no stranger to hypocrisy, nor to its tendency to call it on others as a means of diverting attention. So it was that Rupe’s downmarket troops launched a bitter and petulant attack on Labour leadership front runner Andy Burnham today, as the news reached them that he had indicated that he would not only not be giving papers like the Sun any kind of special favours, he was also not going to be giving them interviews.

There is a very good reason why Burnham, alone among the leadership hopefuls, has reason to keep the Sun at arm’s length: he comes from Aintree, near Liverpool, he’s a lifelong Everton supporter, and both Red and Blue parts of the city have joined together in their revulsion at the behaviour of the Murdoch press in the aftermath of the Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989 - and more recently.

The Sun has recently issued a grovelling apology, but has now re-employed its then editor Kelvin MacKenzie as a regular columnist. It was Kelvin McFilth who personally ordered the fateful “The Truth” front page, and stood by it even as other papers that had used the same source apologised and withdrew theirs. While the new Hillsborough inquests are going on, to have Kel back at the Sun shows they just don’t care.

So it was no surprise to see the BBC reporting “Labour leadership candidate Andy Burnham has indicated he would not do an interview with the Sun newspaper if he becomes party leader … Mr Burnham told the BBC he had not forgiven the paper for its coverage of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster”. The Liverpool Echo, which does not publish the Sun’s name in full in order to demonstrate its displeasure, concurred.

Their website reported “when he was questioned specifically about the S*n, Mr Burnham told the Sunday Politics North West programme: ‘I give interviews generally and people can report my words. But I don’t do special favours for newspapers that attack me and attack my party’”. Most sales outlets on Merseyside do not stock or sell the Sun.

The result of this revelation has been to set the Sun off on an outburst that was as petulant as it was hypocritical. “BRIDGES? ANDY’S BURNT’EM … Labour hypocrite won't speak to The Sun” howled the headline. There was more: “Andy Burnham said today he would not do an interview with The Sun if he becomes party leader … He said he did not do ‘special favours’ for papers which ‘attack’ him or the Labour Party”.

And they weren’t finished. “Really, Andy! What about the last Labour leadership race when you DID think it was worth talking to millions of ordinary Brits who read The Sun … ANDY WAS INTERVIEWED IN OUR SUN CAB”. That would be the black cabs that the Sun has done next to nothing to promote in their fight against driver-and-rider matching services like Uber - other than to take a poll on the subject.

The Sun doesn’t give a crap about those that Andy Burnham counts as his friends. Why should he abandon those friends just to crawl to a shower of journalistic filth devoid of principles, and the ability to tell the truth? What God-given right does Rupert Murdoch have to interfere in the internal workings of the Labour Party?

Good for Andy Burnham. Creepy Uncle Rupe doesn’t even have the vote in the UK.