The next Media Society event, “Will the Sun win it again?”, promises to be an interesting sideshow to the general election campaign. It’s an on-stage interview with the paper’s associate editor, Trevor Kavanagh, conducted by Phil Harding.
The title is clearly drawn from the Sun’s 1992 headline, “It was the Sun wot won it”. It was a boast by editor Kelvin MacKenzie about the paper having played the crucial part in the electoral victory of John Major over Neil Kinnock.
Kavanagh, having been appointed as political editor by MacKenzie in 1983, had been an enthusiastic supporter of Major’s predecessor, Margaret Thatcher.
He was less enamoured with Major and he, like the Sun and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, gave his support instead to Tony Blair in the 1997 election (Blair, by the way, not Labour).
But Kavanagh never felt comfortable with a Labour prime minister in power. Although it did help him to land several scoops, he was relieved when he was allowed to be critical of Blair towards the end of his period in office.
By 2004, Kavanagh was regarded as so influential that he was listed at No 8 in the Guardian’s top media 100 ahead of his reporting on Blair’s third successive election victory in 2005.
By the time Gordon Brown came to power, Kavanagh had given up the political editorship and been appointed as associate editor, with a column. And he was delighted with the opportunity to attack the hapless Labour premier.
But his support for David Cameron’s Tories made no discernible difference to the outcome of the 2010 election which gave us a coalition government.
Despite not warming to Cameron, his columns since have been trenchantly opposed to Labour’s Ed Miliband and all his works.
Now 72, he has lost none of his enthusiasm for journalism. And he has also been a tireless campaigner on behalf of fellow Sun journalists arrested by the Metropolitan police’s Operation Elveden.
So there is much for Harding to get his teeth into when he interviews Kavanagh at the Groucho Club next Tuesday (14 April). It starts at 6pm.
Only eight tickets are now available. They can be purchased on Eventbrite here.
Source: Media Society