Within a year of The Sun backing Blair in 1997, the uncomfortable re-alignment of the newspaper was broken by one of the most unedifying headlines of recent times upon the revelation that Peter Mandelson and then Nick Brown were both gay.

As a rather more right-wing than I am now Conservative student, I didn’t give the question “Tell Us Tony: Are We Being Run By A Gay Mafia?” as much consideration as I no doubt should have done but in the furore that followed, the newspaper pledged to bring its attitudes to homosexually into somewhere approaching the 20th century.

Now older, and questionably slightly wiser but certainly more liberal with a small “L”, I note with sadness that people rarely change and newspapers never do. Today, as One Nation Tory notes, the paper is asking its readers the question “Should gay people be cabinet ministers?“ Really.

All of which goes to show that in 12 years the Sun has gone nowhere on this, that Labour’s strategy of legislating to rid ourselves of bigotry is a total sophistry and that it is personal experiences that change values and attitudes. The experience of reading the Sun today is hardly likely to be helpful.

PM doing his Darth Vader impression

With his attack on The Sun today, PM shows himself to be even more shameless than I thought. He condemns the paper for its reporting of the Jamie Janes letter row and accuses it of striking a deal with the Conservative Party to support them in the election in return for favours.

It’s funny that he should mention that because this is exactly what Labour did in 1997 with The Sun. Since then News International has benefitted from deregulation of the media and steered the government’s line, against Tony Blair’s better judgement, away from European Monetary Union. They were Labour’s favours to The Sun – along with leaks aplenty about everything from government policy to general election dates.

The architects of the 1997 switch? Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair and PM himself. But he seems to have forgotten that.

As for the issue, the PM’s scrawled note was hardly the Bixby letter but I’m not going to criticise him for writing it. It was appallingly calligraphed and spelled but that’s not really the PM’s fault either given his sight problems.

What I think is a problem is that he clearly needs help in this department to convey the dignity onto such a sensitive circumstance that the office of Prime Minister befits – yet he is too proud to ask for it. Either this, or the fact he doesn’t believe he needs help, is to me another worrying sign of a Prime Minister with very little self-awareness and a poor understanding of his own strengths and weaknesses.

Mandelson suffers from no such problems and has a very clear understanding of both. But I think he will find that the harder he pushes News International, the harder they will push back. Mr Murdoch doesn’t like being on the losing side but he and his papers need to understand that political times have changed and their support for the Conservatives needs to be eloquent, subtle and nuanced.

The Conservatives are not here to make deals with newpapers. I am sure that ceasation of powers going to Europe, reform of the BBC and other things are probably on the cards – but these are things that need doing anyway and whether or not The Sun supports them, I certainly do.

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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.