Reproduced by kindest permission of the Murdoch clan. I'm a Sky+HD subscriber so they won't mind.

I did my Master’s dissertation on the effect of The Sun‘s election coverage comparing 1992 with 1997 and having done so I regard the political endorsement, whichever way it falls, of Britain’s biggest-selling daily as a key moment in any election campaign.

As a conclusion of my research, I don’t feel The Sun wields that much power politically, although it would be wrong to say that it holds no sway over its readers at all. Perhaps they don’t blindly listen to its editorials, they aren’t bound by its opinions; but what The Sun chooses to report – and how it chooses to report it – is a big deal.

In 1992, The Sun hammered Neil Kinnock in such a way that rendered it difficult for its readers to vote for him. But he wasn’t PM, and couldn’t do much to harm Rupert Murdoch’s media interests on the way out. Brown can – it will be interesting to see whether James Murdoch tells the paper to go hell-for-leather or whether it will all be quite gentlemanly after all. One suspects that Gordon Brown won’t allow such a slight to go unpunished.

The switching of The Sun yesterday is the clearest possible signal that the paper believes DC is on the way to Downing Street. Given Murdoch Jnr’s closeness with George Osborne, it is also likely that the paper already knows what DC will tell the country next week. Despite what @KerryMP – who believes Twitter will counteract The Sun’s influence (seriously) – and others in Labour may say, it is a devastating blow to them. Since 1974, when Rupert Murdoch took ownership, The Sun has never backed the losing side in a general election.

Whether it is symptom or cause – or even, as I suspect, a bit of both – I can’t imagine that they would want to start now. There is still work for the Conservatives to do – in particular, they are vulnerable economically with George Osborne and in traditional areas such as the NHS. They need to spell out some home truths in a credible and caring way – it would be nice to hear some firmer manifesto content too.

The support of The Sun, always derided by its opponents, makes victory in May that bit more likely.

It’s also important to remember that we are not even in an election campaign – I cannot recall any previous election (even 1987) where The Sun has called its endorsement so early. Clearly they have their own reasons but for Labour the only place to go now is The Telegraph - although it’s difficult to see that paper, even in its more modern guise, switching and alienating the majority of its traditional readers.

PM must be furious – he and the PM have pretty much nowhere to go except YouTube.

Having achieved a degree of success conning the media into following their vacuous Twitter campaign #welovethenhs, @KerryMP and the Labour e-coterie has now decided to run another silly season bandwagon, this time on the environment.

Enter Ed Miliband, the Environment Secretary now fully Twittered up, who Tweeted a week ago:

“@KerryMP totally agree on end of the line. Showed in my constit. did they give
out guide on fish to buy? Should be campaign on this.”

This particular piece of non-communication refers not to the end of the line for the Labour government followed by advice on having to buy your own fish (as opposed to getting it on expenses) but to the Bluefin Tuna boycott being pioneered by this organisation.

Now it’s turned into a wider campaign on the Road to Copenhagen, where in 104 days, world leaders will sit down and talk about the environment. They will discuss carbon outputs before India, China and the US refuse to lower their own emissions, instead paying for lesser developed nations to lower theirs in lieu. They will refuse to cut air travel, increase investment in renewable technology, lower oil consumption and take proper action over the destruction of rainforest and natural green space.

There will be no progress on population control (except in China where the sensible one-child policy is the most far-sighted thing about that nation) and instead we will get a series of headline-grabbing initiatives such as save the whale, hug the trees and re-glaze the icebergs – none of which will make the slightest difference to our environmental mess.

Still, if Labour really wants to push this charade as caring about the environment, that’s their problem. I’m sure a #RoadtoCopenhagen topic will appear soon, as well as some media coverage about climate-change denying Tories (which no doubt they will try and generate – Tory MPs/MEPs beware).

And after the environment, what will be the next campaign? It’s not as if Labour hasn’t got a huge mess that they’ve landed this nation in to try and sort out.

There is one Labour MP whose media profile is being inflated by a concerted PR effort and that is Kerry McCarthy, the highly prolific Twitterer who in between tweets is also MP for Bristol East.

Having managed 4,555 updates in 36 weeks – that’s 126 a week, or an average of 18 each day – @KerryMP has now been “officially” appointed as Labour’s Twitter Tsar by Douglas Alexander, who was not only a very poor Secretary of State for Transport but will now look after Gordon Brown‘s general election campaign.

The very fact that anyone would be foolish enough to take on such a job is reason enough in my mind to doubt their judgement and to appoint a Twitter Tsar seems to institutionalise Twitter in a way that is the very opposite of its original intended purpose. That MPs have to be trained on how to use it is damning of the calibre of people that sit in parliament – most 14-year olds seem to pick it up in a few days.

So the thrusting of @KerryMP, willingly no doubt, into the limelight (she’s also in PR Week today as well) may seem like a good plan but I doubt that Twitter is going to win many votes at the next general election. Most people on Twitter are there, by their very nature, because like me they’ve already made up their mind and have something to say.

And Twitter is the perfect ether into which to spray their rants, prejudices and humour in the hope that some like mind will be found to appreciate it.

PS: @KerryMP ought not to spend too much time Twittering because her Bristol East seat is vulnerable. In 2005, neighbouring Bristol North turned yellow, overturning a Labour majority of 4,500 to give a majority of 5,000 to Stephen Williams. @KerryMP (majority 8,500) is facing ex-West Byfleet Tory councillor-turned Lib Dem PPC Mike Popham in the seat in 2010, which is packed full of students (ironically as a result of Labour’s accessibility programme). Will she hang on? Electoral Calculus predicts a Conservative gain of all things!