I NEVER did quite share the visceral contempt in which almost all lefties seem to hold The Sun, although I certainly understand where it’s coming from. The vicious personalised red-baiting in the Thatcher years, the bitterness generated by the Wapping dispute, and the way the bastards stitched up Kinnock all take some forgetting.

But I reckon that at least some of the loathing is down to snobbery. The Currant Bun is not Britain’s best-selling newspaper for nothing, and most of the people that read it are, well, you know, a bit … working class.

And although the red top doesn’t quite pull off the trick as well as once it did, the secret of its success has been the brilliance with which it has been able to articulate the concerns and prejudices of its readership.

When on form, it is as much the authentic voice of the Diamond Geezer as the Daily Mail is the precise ideological expression of the Middle England Chelsea tractor mum.

The Sun was the newspaper I was used to seeing about the house when I was growing up. After all, it contained as much news as my old man could ever use, in as much depth as a Labour-voting trade union stalwart railwayman who wasn’t much interested in anything that happened beyond Calais could ever want.

Throw in full perm plans for doing the pools, the most successful racing tipster in Fleet Street, and teenage girls getting their kit off, and it is entirely obvious why circulation peaked at four million.

After I got involved in politics, I made a point of reading the tabloid every day, in the same way I made a point of reading the Financial Times and Socialist Worker. Each of them, albeit after a different fashion, told you something you needed to know about how certain layers of society were thinking.

Until the early 1990s, The Sun – as well as the rest of the News International stable – formed an integral part of what socialists used to call ‘the Tory press’. Out and out hatred for the titles was de rigueur for Labour activists. Indeed, after Wapping, it was party policy for MPs to refuse interview requests from News International publications.

As late as 1992, Labour’s manifesto carried a commitment to a Monopolies and Mergers Commission inquiry into the concentration of press ownership. The provision didn’t mention Murdoch by name; then again, it didn’t have to.

New Labour changed all that, and quickly, too. As soon as it was clear that he would become the next prime minister, Blair flew to Australia at Murdoch’s expense, clocking up 50 hours flying time to address a conference of News International executives.

Reports at the time suggested that Murdoch and Blair came to an arrangement that would deliver endorsement from the Sun and neutrality from The Times, in return for the sort of favours that New Labour was only too anxious to do for leading businessmen anyway.

That’s never been proven, but concession after concession to the company were seen to follow. For many years, News International kept its tax bills below 2%, even as it railed against people that sponge off the state. Somebody please tell that scam has not been allowed to continue.

New Labour helpfully overturned in the Commons a Lords attempt to outlaw loss-leader promotions from The Times, a tactic clearly designed to kill off the Indie, which was struggling then as now. Blair even personally chatted up Berlusconi when Murdoch’s BSkyB wanted to buy controlling interest in Italian TV station.

But the ability to deliver favours not fairness necessitates being in office, and the present government seems unlikely to be in office a year from now.

In short, New Labour came to power on the back of a more or less explicit deal with the Murdoch empire. It’s going it some to argue that loss of support from the Sun will bring about its downfall, but the decision symbolises a watershed in British politics, nevertheless.