The Sun is losing money fast

According to London Centric’s Jim Waterson, the Sun is in dire straits:

The Sun’s accounts are out and I haven’t seen anyone report on them so…*Pre-tax loss of £31m*Revenue down from £296m to £273m (Sub now in the same ballpark as the Guardian)*Phone hacking costs (now into its third decade) of £36.6m*Big fall in audience but still claim to be UK’s number one brand

— Jim Waterson (@jim.londoncentric.media) 2026-04-14T05:37:11.975Z

Of course, none of this means the rag is at risk of shutting down. As we all know, the Sun doesn’t exist to publish news or even make money; it exists to bully politicians into listening to owner Rupert Murdoch.

The Sun is a propaganda paper

Over on X/Twitter, the popular Flying Rodent account asked the following:

It’s been a long time since the Sun made a profit, which raises questions like “what is the paper’s actual purpose, if it isn’t for making money”.

As Waterson noted, the Sun has incurred phone hacking costs of £36.6m. This substantial figure makes it abundantly clear that something is not right in media land. Despite this, political scrutiny on the matter has dried up.

As we reported in November 2025:

The Sun newspaper has yet again agreed to pay through the nose because of its past reporting. In this instance, they’ve apologised to Christopher Jefferies and paid him “substantial damages”.

Despite this happening fairly frequently, Keir Starmer has abandoned completing the Leveson 2 inquiry into press standards. It would be pretty awkward if he didn’t, of course, given the fact that he occasionally writes for the Sun now.

Starmer began his Labour leadership campaign with a promise to never speak to the Sun. He would betray that promise as soon as he could, jumping into bed with the Sun at the first available opportunity.

He did this despite how unpopular the tabloid has always been with Labour members. Now, Labour have found themselves having to draft national MPs to canvass for London councils in the local elections because so many of their activists have moved on:

The point we’re making is that it was never in Starmer’s political interests to ally himself with the Sun. Presumably, he felt like he would suffer more damage if he spurned the Murdoch rag. This ended up proving false, but it still demonstrates how well trained our politicians have become by the Sun.

Turning the page

We’re now in a moment where the British press aren’t just failing financially. The Greens have overtaken Labour in the polls, and leader Zack Polanski has shown you can stand up to the tabloids without suffering political consequences. If anything, it seems that pushing back against the billionaire-owned media is viewed as a selling point.

In other words, Murdoch may be happy to lose money now, but that situation won’t last forever.

Featured image via Hudson Institute (Wikimedia)