The Sun and Gordon Brown

The Sun has acquired a transcript of a phone call by Gordon Brown with the mother of Jamie Janes, a soldier killed in October. I presume that they obtained this with the knowledge and consent of Mrs Janes.

Given that Mr Brown made the original mistake of sending the badly written letter, he was surely right to phone Mrs Janes to apologise. What was the reason for recording the conversation, presumably without Mr Brown’s knowledge? The only reason that I can think of is the hope that he would say something that might be used afterward to embarrass him.

Mrs Janes, who has just lost her son, is presumably motivated by anger and grief. I think the Sun has two objectives. The first is to sell newspapers, which they are doing in this case by creating a controversy through clandestine means. The second is political: to damage the current government. This is partly because the Murdoch Empire always wants the government of the day to owe it favours (and they have decided the next government will be Mr Cameron’s), and the Tories will benefit Sky by restricting the BBC.

It strikes me that in secretly recording Mr Brown’s call, the Sun used underhand tactics for completely cynical motives.