Sun Banker Bashing Explained

What has got into the Murdoch faithful at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun lately? The 2008 financial crash, last week, was suddenly attributed to the people who actually caused it - the bankers. This was a bit radical for Tony Gallagher and his pals - after all, since he has sat in the editor’s chair, the only thing the Sun has been notorious for is its ability to tell More And Bigger Whoppers For The Benefit Of Itself Personally Now.

Yet there it was: under the headline “Nail the banks”, readers were told “Why do our top bankers remain unpunished for triggering the 2008 recession? … The world is still feeling aftershocks. A worse downturn could be imminent … Every day our courts process countless petty crimes … Yet almost none of the bankers who oversaw catastrophic incompetence and reckless greed costing the country billions faced the music”.

Wow. That’s quite a U-Turn for a paper that brought its readers stories like “Ed says sorry for Labour's economic Balls-up”. That attack on then-Shadow Chancellor “Auguste” Balls continued “Mr Balls said he was sorry for failing to regulate the banks more tightly ahead of the crash, which took place under Gordon Brown, and admitted not every penny had been spent wisely by the Labour party”. It was Pa Broon’s crash back then.

Even on the day of last year’s General Election, a Sun editorial thundered “Millionaire celebrities queue up to front Labour’s campaign of misinformation. Maybe the great recession to which Labour left us so exposed passed these luvvies by. It certainly didn’t hurt them like it did ordinary people … Maybe they never read the ‘joke’ Labour left the incoming Coalition in 2010, sneering that there was no money left. But mega-rich stars will not suffer one bit when Labour turns on the spending taps, wrecks businesses and crashes the economy again”. Less than a year ago, it was Labour’s fault.

And it was Labour’s fault in 2010: as the Sun pleaded with its readers to vote for Young Dave, an editorial told “Can gloomy Gordon Brown put right what Labour have messed up for 13 years? … Mr Brown asks to be judged on Labour’s record, first under Tony Blair and then under him. So let’s do it … We know Labour have wrecked the economy. Mr Brown has trebled the national debt for a wasteful spree the country could never afford”.

But then, that editorial also said “Make no mistake, if the Tories gain power we will hold them to account and make sure they deliver for you”. But they haven’t: all the Sun’s attentions since Mil The Younger became Labour leader, and then again after Jeremy Corbyn took over last year, have been in creating one screaming denunciation after another. Directed towards Labour. And letting the Tories off the hook.

And that is what the banker bashing rant is really about: there is no way the Sun can dump on the Tories. Rupert Murdoch is relying on Cameron and his pals to screw over the BBC, green light the next bid for Sky, and kick Leveson 2 into the long grass. So the next crash will be someone else’s fault. It is not the first time the Sun has helped the Tories in this way: the paper backed Mrs T when she blamed a “World recession” in her first term.

That was a pack of lies, too. But being at the Sun means never having to say you’re sorry.