10. The Press: It’s the Sun Wot Shunned It

‘Time for a New Manager (and We Don’t Mean Sack Southgate)’. So rang out The Sun’s final frontpage of the 2024 general election campaign on 4 July. Positioned over the backdrop of a football pitch and accompanied by an image of England manager Gareth Southgate and a football stamped with the text ‘The Sun ELECTION SPECIAL’, the headline managed to deftly distil both the sentiment of ‘change’ that the ultimately victorious Labour Party had coalesced its messaging strategy around and the major distraction that the ongoing Euro 2024 tournament (and England’s hopes of success) presented to the public and redtop journalists alike during the campaign. More than this, however, the frontpage seemed to exemplify ambivalence about and avoidance of the implications of the headline’s message. Nowhere in this image were any parties, politicians or policies. The Sun’s reluctance to offer a full-throated visual backing to the country’s prospective ‘new manager’ was symptomatic of the lukewarm endorsement for Labour found inside the paper. And while this campaign might be the last in which there is extensive speculation about the newspaper’s influence, the related digital brand looks set to continue playing a role in British politics.