From Blair to Keir: Labour are wooing The Sun… again.     

On Wednesday 30^th July, Sir Keir Starmer reached deep into the ‘talent’ pool and fished out David Dinsmore, the Sun alumnus best known for his chaotic term as editor from 2013 to 2015, appointing him the government’s new permanent secretary-level director of communications, catapulting him straight to the upper echelons of Whitehall.  Dinsmore’s new role in the Cabinet Office was greeted with apathy and bemusement, especially in Liverpool, where the infamous tabloid has been boycotted, with The Sun’s take on the Hillsborough Disaster still raw, three decades on.   

For those unfamiliar, The Sun took 23 years before finally apologising for their notorious front page which blamed Liverpool FC fans for the 1989 Hillsborough tragedy, which claimed 97 lives.  

 Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, Steve Rotheram, did not mince his words regarding the appointment on BBC Radio Merseyside, stating that “Dinsmore should not be anywhere near a senior government role”, whilst Labour MP for Liverpool and West Derby, Ian Byrne, posted that he felt “disgusted” on X. 

  This episode is just another contentious entry in a long list of complicated interactions between the Labour Party and the tabloid.   Dinsmore’s tenure as editor of The Sun, though short, was certainly not short of fireworks.    He was convicted of breaching the Sexual Offences Act for publishing a photograph of the 15-year-old victim of ex-footballer Adam Johnson, before resisting the removal of the infamous ‘Page Three’, which featured topless female glamour models known reductively as ‘Page 3 girls’.   Dinsmore claimed it was a “good way of selling newspapers”, earning him the esteemed “Sexist of the Year” accolade from campaign group ‘End Violence Against Women’ in 2014.  Dinsmore was further embarrassed in 2025 when The Sun apologised for its complicity in multiple phone hacking scandals, involvement which he had continuously denied during his time as editor. 

So, why has the PM decided to appoint someone at the heart of such recent controversy? Has he forgotten that Dinsmore was at the heart of the voicemail hacking scandal surrounding murdered 13-year-old girl Milly Dowler? 

It wasn’t just Dinsmore’s own personal mistakes which attracted unwanted attention.  

Katie Hopkins, who he continually platformed and promoted, described asylum seekers as “cockroaches” in her column for the then-editor.   

  No wonder, then, that the left of Keir’s party is not thrilled with his latest tabloid-coddling appointment.

Starmer, The Labour Party and The Sun

 Starmer himself has had a conflicting and often contradictory relationship with the right-wing tabloid.   In the run up to the 2024 election, Starmer claimed he was “delighted” to receive the (somewhat tepid) endorsement of The Sun.   This was a far cry from his stance when running for the Labour leadership in 2020, during which he refused to even offer the paper an interview.  

The appointment of Dinsmore represents a wider change in opinion on the PM’s part, strategically cosying up to The Sun, risking the alienation of a large portion of his members and voters.  Perhaps he thinks it more important to appeal to The Sun’s working-class readers to be re-elected in the next general election.  

Starmer is not the first Labour leader to wrangle with wretched tabloid relations, struggling to bridge the gap between the party’s left-leaning base and the paper’s right-wing opinions; alleged electoral pull is a powerful thing.  Although its perceived influence may have declined in recent years due to declining readership, The Sun has typically been seen to have a significant electoral impact, having supported every winning party in UK elections since 1979.  

Labour saw the effect of this most clearly in 1992, when The Sun’s support for Major’s Tories, and their derision of Neil Kinnock, was hailed as the key to deciding a razor-thin contest.   The Sun, ever modest, bought into their election-deciding reputation, publishing the notorious headline “It’s The Sun Wot Won It” the day after Major’s victory.   Labour have courted the tabloid’s endorsement ever since, in an attempt to alleviate their long-lasting electoral woes. Blair’s “New Labour” eyed the Murdoch press, particularly The Sun, as prime catch.  

So, in 1995, Blair and his spin chief Alistair Campbell endured a 25-hour flight to Murdoch’s Hayman Island chasing favourable headlines from the press baron.  The move was divisive even then, with party grandees like John Prescott and ex-leader Neil Kinnock voicing grave qualms about ‘getting into bed’ with the Murdoch press. Whether Keir will get the sequel remains to be seen.  

As predicted by these Labour veterans, Blair’s chumminess with the British tabloids would cause New Labour substantial headaches in office. Never before had the right-wing press had such access to Downing Street, with journalist Andrew Neil describing the relationship between the press and the government as “almost incestuous”.  

Sun editor David Yellend had frequent correspondence and private hour-long meetings with the PM.  Meanwhile, Murdoch’s protégé Rebekah Brooks wielded unprecedented governmental sway as editor of News of the World, staying in almost-constant contact with Campbell and enjoying direct access to Blair.  

But the closest and most powerful bond was Blair and Murdoch’s, a friendship that went beyond business, epitomised by Blair being named as godfather to one of Murdoch’s daughters with Wendi Deng. 

The ethics of such a close relationship between Britain’s PM and the world’s biggest press baron? Dubious in the eyes of some, non-existent in the eyes of others. Peter Oborne pointed out how Murdoch had “access to Blair all the time, whenever he wanted it”.  

Hugh Grant, himself a victim of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, even joked that neither Blair nor Cameron dared to cough without Murdoch’s nod.  

Murdoch’s puppeteering was on full display during the New Labour days: Blair backed off the Euro, bowing to The Sun’s fierce Euroscepticism to keep the right-wing tabloids sweet. The darkest fallout of Blair’s Murdoch romance? The Iraq War, 2003. In the week prior to the US-UK invasion, it was not his foreign secretary, or security advisors, or MI6 seniors who Blair sought advice from, but Rupert Murdoch, who personally called Blair three times to chat war plans. On invasion-eve, Murdoch was among the final voices on Blair’s line.  Murdoch, ever the hawk post-9/11, had his British tabloids banging the war drum for Iraq, backing Blair’s gamble all the way.  

Meanwhile, with Fox News doubling as Bush’s propaganda mouthpiece, Murdoch enjoyed White House VIP access, fancying himself as a backchannel between Washington and Downing Street, twisting Blair’s arm to back an invasion sans UN approval. 

In short: an unelected, unaccountable media baron helped push two global powers into war. Politics and press had fused beyond repair, leading to an illegal invasion built on lies, costing hundreds of thousands of lives. For Blair, his ‘dance with the devil’ might’ve seemed the price for power and progress, but it backfired spectacularly, corroding British democracy and staining his legacy for good. The Iraq War ruined Blair and sealed his fate with the British public. By 2007, he was forced to resign from pressure within his own party, he faced endless legal probes over the invasion, and he is branded a war criminal across the world.  

Labour’s calamities with The Sun did not stop with Blair. Sensing that the public had grown tired of the New Labour project, they threw their support behind the young, fresh Conservative leader, David Cameron.  They cozied up to the Tory elite just as they had done with Blair. Rebekah Brooks’ future husband, Charlie, was a schoolmate of Cameron’s, and their families – neighbours in Chipping Norton – often dined together.  The Cameron-tabloid ties were laid bare when Andy Coulson, Cameron’s comms chief and ex-News of the World editor, was investigated by the Leveson Inquiry after being implicated in the phone-hacking scandals and imprisoned.  

From 2010, The Sun has turned its guns against Labour, completely. They backed Brexit with gusto, and savaged Jeremy Corbyn throughout his tenure as head, gleefully dubbing him “Red Jezza”.  

So, what’s Starmer playing at? He’s channelling Blair in style and substance—right down to courting the right-wing press. Bringing in Dinsmore feels like the opening move in a bigger game. 

The politics–media revolving door spins as briskly as ever, and Labour seems to have learned nothing from the Blair years. The backlash to Dinsmore’s hire carries the ghosts of past waltzes with The Sun, and the damage they left behind.