Back in 1992, there was a British general election which pitted a still largely Thatcherite Conservative party now led by John Major against an unreconstructed Labour party led by Neil Kinnock—who had also been the Labour leader defeated by Mrs. Thatcher in 1987. Labour was widely expected to win. On election day, the country’s biggest-selling tabloid newspaper, The Sun, which was and is owned by Rupert Murdoch, ran an anti-Labour article under the headline: “If Neil Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.” After the Tories unexpectedly won their fourth consecutive election that day, The Sun crowed: “It Was The Sun Wot Won It!” Whether or not this was true, the claim was widely believed, not least by the Labour Party itself which, first under John Smith and then under Tony Blair, proceeded to transform itself into “New Labour,” to obtain the backing of The Sun and other Murdoch-owned papers against Mr. Major and to win the next election, in 1997, in a landslide. Since then the party has won two more elections and always taken good care to keep on the good side of The Sun and of Mr. Murdoch.

I only mention it because the frankness with which British newspapers proclaim their partisanship and openly campaign for one party over another comes as a breath of fresh air through the stifling hypocrisy and mendacity of American media politics—alas from too great a distance to stir things up