Associated’s Flirtation With Labour

Associated Newspapers’ chairman, Sir David English, has revealed that the group has considered switching sides to support Tony Blair’s Labour at the next general election.

Sir David English, writing in an article in this week’s Spectator, has relayed details of a conversation he had with the group proprietor Viscount Rothermere. Viscount Rothermere said he did not see it as impossible for Associated’s papers, which include the staunch Tory paper the Daily Mail, to carry pro-Labour editorials.

Labour party members, sceptical that Associated would ever support them, saw the article as an attempt to frighten the Government.