**The Sun newspaper has endorsed the Conservatives to win the next election, ending its support for Labour.**The paper’s front page on Wednesday says “after 12 long years in power, Labour has lost its way and now it has lost us too”.
The Sun previously came out in support of Tony Blair six weeks before Labour’s landslide victory in 1997.
But Home Secretary Alan Johnson has said it is “electors that decide elections not newspapers”.
George Pascoe-Watson, the Sun’s political editor, told the BBC: "The prime minister failed to convince us he was the right man for the country.
‘‘We feel it’s time for a new leader’’.
Mr Pascoe-Watson also said that in 2005 "the Sun warned Labour that it had one last chance… to try and prove it was the right party for the country.
“The Sun’s decision to desert Labour in this way and at this time will cause dismay in Labour ranks”
Nick Robinson, BBC political editor
“We’ve now decided after four more years, particularly after the prime minister’s… underwhelming performance in his conference speech, that it was time now to take a verdict and announce that verdict to the nation.”
Referring to Mr Brown’s speech in Brighton on Tuesday, Mr Pascoe-Watson expressed disappointment at the "30 seconds that [he] spent on Afghanistan - a campaign which we have been running very very hard.
“And of course the Sun has always said that Gordon Brown promised us a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, he’s failed to deliver that promise and that’s a huge issue for the Sun.”
Mr Pascoe-Watson said the paper believed that Tory leader David Cameron had “the vision, the energy, the drive, the ideas to take the country forward”.
He added: "We believe he will cut away a lot of the red tape which is strangling British business.
"We think he is a fresh administration, he’s got good people around him, and we will be holding him to account.
“We’ll be an honest friend but we’ll also be a critical friend, like we were with Labour for many years - 12 years is longer than we ever supported a Conservative administration in the past.”
According to the BBC’s chief political correspondent James Landale, who is at the Labour Party conference in Brighton, allies of the prime minister said: “It may be the newspapers that get David Cameron out of bed in the morning - for Gordon Brown, it’s the issues that matter to the British people.”
Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband admitted to BBC Two’s Newsnight that he had “seen better headlines”.
He said: “I want as many people to support us as possible and it would be better if the Sun was supporting us but… I think the Sun’s made the wrong judgement.”
The BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson said the Sun had “timed its big political switch… for maximum impact both in terms of gaining attention for the paper and taking the gloss off Mr Brown’s big day”.
Labour must now hope that the paper does not choose to regularly attack Mr Brown himself, which, “rather than a single day’s endorsement of the Tories… would do real damage”, he said.
The newspaper was a big supporter of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain of the 1980s, backing the controversial poll tax and mounting attacks on Tory MPs who plotted against the then-prime minister.
After she was ousted in 1990, the Sun stood by new Prime Minister John Major, and on polling day in 1992, the paper ran a front page showing Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s head in a light bulb.
The headline read: “If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.”
Many pundits had predicted a Labour victory but the Tories retained power, prompting the Sun to famously declare: “It’s The Sun Wot Won It.”