The Sun Says Ignore The Sun

These are not happy times for those demanding the Government takes an advisory referendum as The Will Of The People and follows though on leaving the EU. Opinion is slipping away from the Leave camp as the effects of the Brexit process become apparent. So it is that our free and fearless press has had to resort to increasingly desperate measures to keep its flock of still loyal readers on the straight and narrow.

Tony Gallagher demands his P45 right NOW

This, though, cannot be blamed for the idiocy that has taken hold among the Murdoch goons at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun, who have today exhibited signs of going stir crazy at their continued confinement in the Baby Shard bunker as they have brought forth the ridiculous headline “We need to stop listening to big business - which has been on the wrong side of every key debate of the last 100 years - about Brexit”.

Do go on. “IN a world changing at the speed of light why would Britain submit forever to the stranglehold of EU trading rules and stay shackled to a customs union? It would be the worst possible Brexit option. Those still suggesting it, some in Cabinet, need their heads examined … Why do they do it? Because ‘big business’ wants it”.

And who is this “big business”? “Big business, in the shape of the CBI, has been wrong at every key moment in the last century … It lobbied to appease Hitler”. Given the lack of time travelling devices at hand, and the mildly inconvenient fact that the CBI was not founded until 1965, that counts as a straight-A Pants On Fire.

And while we’re on the “Ignore big business” schtick, did the Murdoch goons not realise they were standing in an awfully draughty glasshouse? Have they not thought that the very large building in which they all work might be rather a significant part of “big business”?

It gets worse: the Sun is part of the Murdoch empire, which also includes a 39% stake in broadcaster Sky, which this time last year proclaimed “The entertainment company, which owns Sky News, said revenue for the six months to the end of December 2016 had expanded to £6.41bn, a rise of just under £700m … The company made an operating profit for the period of £679m, which was 9% lower than the same period last year”.

Sky is larger in terms of revenue than the BBC. It is the epitome of “big business”. And so is the jewel in the Murdoch crown, 21st Century Fox, which has, since 2011, reported an annual turnover consistently in excess of $20 billion. That’s a 2 with ten zeroes on the end of it. Its net income for 2017 - net income - was in excess of $3 billion. This is not mere “big business”, it’s mega business. So what does that mean for the Sun’s editorial?

Put simply, it means that the Sun wants its readers to ignore, er, The Sun. Because they should ignore big business, and the Sun IS big business. Good to see the Murdoch goons endorsing what the people of Liverpool have been urging since 1989.

Yes, there’s no point in wasting your money - it’s official. Don’t buy the Sun.