Sir Keir Starmer, leader of Britain's main opposition Labour Party, was confronted by an offended voter in Liverpool over writing an article for right-wing The Sun tabloid, in October 2021.
The Labour Party chief had beforehand promised to not give interviews to the paper throughout his management marketing campaign at a hustings within the metropolis in January 2020.
The publication is broadly boycotted in Liverpool because of its protection of the aftermath of the Hillsborough catastrophe in 1989.
As a outcome, Sir Keir was met with a livid lady after giving a speech within the metropolis on Monday, the place he laid out the priorities for the subsequent Labour authorities.
“I don’t know how you’ve got the guts to come to this city, after you’ve been interviewed and doing columns for The Sun newspaper, after the way we as a city were abused and the Hillsborough victims were abused by that paper,” stated Audrey White.
“Secondly, you lied to us about uniting the party. I’m still a Labour Party member and you’ve expelled and witch hunted in the most vicious way I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. And I’ve been a member of the Labour Party for a long, long time.
“You have absolutely said you had ten pledges, you were going to carry on the Corbyn legacy, and ever since you’ve done nothing but distance yourself from the ideas which tens of thousands of people joined the Labour Party to support.
“All you’ve done is feed into the Tory idealogy of not supporting strikes, of carrying on with the privatisation of our health service.”
Why Liverpudlians hate The Sun
Coverage of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster by The Sun led to the newspaper's decline in Liverpool and the broader Merseyside region, with organised boycotts against it.
The disaster occurred at a football match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. 97 Liverpool supporters were crushed to death, and several hundred others were injured, due to negligence by the South Yorkshire Police.
Four days after the incident, The Sun published a front-page story with the headline "The Truth" containing a number of falsehoods alleging that Liverpool supporters were responsible for the accident.
Though other newspapers reported stories critical of the fans, The Sun's repetition of unreliable claims as fact and position on the incident in the aftermath of the event led to outrage amongst Liverpudlians.
After a protest in Kirkby in which women burned copies of the newspaper, The Sun (referred to as The S*n or The Scum) was widely boycotted in Merseyside.
Sales have been estimated to have dropped from 55,000 per day in the region to 12,000 in 2019. Campaigns against the newspaper, including "Total Eclipse of the Sun" and "Shun the Sun" first aimed to decrease purchases of the tabloid, and then supply of it by retailers.
Journalists from the paper have been denied access to interviews at Liverpool and Everton grounds. Chris Horrie estimated in 2014 that the boycott had cost The Sun's owners £15 million per month, in 1989 terms, since the disaster.
