One of the government's champion peddlers of Labour PR, The Sun, has switched its allegiance to the Tories. But the question now raging in the public relations profession is whether the newspaper's decision will make any significant difference.
The Sun has backed the winning party in every general election since the Conservatives' surprise victory under Edward Heath in 1970, leading to claims that the red top tabloid has a massive influence on the way readers vote.
And nothing typifies these claims more than in 1992 when The Sun launched a series of savage attacks on Labour leader Neil Kinnock in the run-up to the general election, culminating in its famous polling day headline 'If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights'.
Then on the following day when, against all expectations, the Tories held on to power, The Sun audaciously declared 'It's The Sun wot won it'.
However, many commentators see these claims as widely exaggerated and point to several studies that have found that newspapers have relatively little influence on an election outcome.
So in the case of The Sun, it is more likely that it had historically switched its support to align itself with its readers rather than taking the lead and influencing them in a particular direction.
What's more, the media landscape has changed beyond recognition since 1992, when there were only four TV channels and the internet was only in its infancy.
So if The Sun's claims had any genuine substance, it's unlikely the paper could exert the same kind of influence now, with a multitude of news channels, citizen journalism sites, social media and social bookmarking sites to compete with.
However, one thing is for sure: The Sun's defection to the Tories does matter, as the timing of the announcement, during the last Labour Party Conference before an election, and also the psychological impact will both be hugely significant.
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