The Sun says Ed Miliband’s criticism of News UK is due to its support for Tories

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/apr/24/the-sun-ed-milibands-news-uk-tories

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“For once the Guardian is right”, declares the Sun’s leader column today, before going on to attack Labour’s criticism of its parent company, Rupert Murdoch’s News UK.

The tabloid claimed Labour’s declared intention to break up Murdoch’s UK empire was a “direct result” of the Sun switching supporting the Conservatives and said “during all the years the Sun backed them … Labour said nothing about the size of our company”.

Miliband called for new media ownership rules in the UK in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal, saying News Corporation had too much power in the UK.

In an editorial which begins in unlikely fashion, the Sun said it was wrong for the paper to be excluded from a Tory press call with David Cameron and Boris Johnson, before expanding to wider issues about freedom of the press.

Here’s what the Sun leader had to say.

For once the Guardian is right. Seriously.

They shouldn’t be excluded from Tory election events. But this cuts both ways. Labour has barred the Sun from theirs.

Both main parties should be more open to all-comers from the press, especially at election time. But there is a big difference between the two: Labour actively seeks to silence critics.

During all the years the Sun backed them from 1997, Labour said nothing about the size of our company. Now, as a direct result of the Sun’s opposition, it has sworn to use the law to dismantle News UK if it wins power.

Dozens of innocent Sun journalists, later cleared, were prosecuted on the say-so of a man now standing for Labour.

Meanwhile, the party vows to enforce the Leveson inquiry’s conclusions. It is all aimed at papers such as the Sun. This is what sinister state censorship REALLY looks like.

Ed Miliband, to his shame, has set himself up as its champion.

Elsewhere, Margaret Thatcher makes the front pages of the Telegraph and the Guardian in an unlikely election twist, although it’s not the former premier herself.

In the Telegraph, it’s Helen Mirren, who praised Thatcher as an “incredible role model” for young girls during a women’s summit in New York.

Mirren is currently playing the Queen in The Audience on Broadway, with the same role occupied by Kristin Scott Thomas on the London stage. She is pictured in the Guardian with the actors playing various prime ministers including Thatcher (Sylvestra Le Touzel).

Back in the real world, David Cameron’s plan for an England-only income tax makes the front pages of the Guardian and the Sun.

The Guardian says Cameron is “playing with fire as he targets Ukip territory” and risks “stoking divisions in the union”.

It is not something that worries the Sun, which mocks up a picture of George Osborne as St George over the headline “St George’s Pay”, comparing and contrasting with “Red Ed’s £12bn tax hike”.

Unite leader Len McCluskey continues to attract plenty of attention from the Telegraph and the Daily Mail, relegating, for the moment, Nichola Sturgeon as the main reason their readers should fear Ed Miliband.

“Move over Alex [Salmond], I own Labour, says union baron Red Len,” declares the strap across the Mail front, while the Telegraph says McCluskey has made his first major intervention of the campaign, declaring that Labour was built “to serve us” and Miliband’s flagship pledges were “our policies”.

The Telegraph also highlights an open letter by former Labour trade minister Lord Jones calling on Miliband to stop “sneering” at wealth creators.

The Mail splashes on immigration and Cameron’s “most significant intervention on the biggest issue of the election campaign”.

It says the Tory leader will make a “passionate appeal to Ukip voters” not to let Labour back into Downing Street, which he says will allow a “return to uncontrolled immigration”.

Inside the Independent, it looks ahead to a Miliband speech in which he will say Cameron’s isolationism has hurt the UK. It says he will hold the PM “partly responsible for this week’s deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean … in a rare speech on foreign affairs”.

Both the Times and the Mirror look at the main parties’ spending plans.

The Mirror accuses the Tories of “sum kind of dishonesty” over a “£47bn chasm in their spending plans [which] is a hammer blow to David Cameron’s credibility”, while the Times reports a thinktank’s conclusions that Ed Miliband would cost each family more than £1,000 in tax.

The Financial Times reports “business jitters at Tory tactics” and says industry leaders are “increasingly frustrated at the tactics and tone of the Conservative election campaign amid boardroom concern that Ed Miliband is mounting a stiffer challenge for No 10 than expected”.

Big news for selfie fans, where David Cameron – thought not entirely to have mastered the art – took his first picture with a “selfie stick”. See for yourself on the front page of the Times, where the PM is pictured in the offices of Pirate FM in Cornwall before returning to the election high seas.