General election: The Sun faces both ways with endorsement choice

The Sun has backed both of the Labour party's major electoral rivals - stirring the bad blood between its owner Rupert Murdoch and Ed Miliband, and creating a cross-border contradiction that was mocked by its critics.

The tabloid endorsed the Tories in its English and Welsh edition on Thursday. The Scottish Sun, however, backed the Scottish National Party, which is poised to win dozens of seats from Labour.

"It shatters utterly the myth that the Sun makes the political weather. It demonstrates quite plainly that the Sun follows public opinion," said Tim Luckhurst, a former editor of the Scotsman.

The Sun and The Scottish Sun - which together are the UK's biggest-selling daily tabloid, with sales of nearly 1.9m copies - have previously expressed different party allegiances. But their stances are now almost directly opposed.

The English edition said that voters should support the Conservatives for three reasons - including "Reason 2: Stop the SNP running the country". The Scottish Sun depicted the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon as Princess Leia from Star Wars with the words, "May the seventh be with you". The two newspapers repeated their messages on separate websites.

"We are a Scottish newspaper, run in Scotland, printed in Scotland, produced in Scotland by Scots, and it's not a surprise to anybody - least of all Rupert Murdoch - that these two papers have a diversion of view," Andrew Nicoll, political editor of the Scottish Sun, told the BBC.

"The people of Scotland seem to have chosen the SNP, and we're going with them."

Newspapers are fighting for influence in an increasingly fragmented media landscape. On Twitter, the Scottish Sun was briefly one of the 10 most mentioned subjects in the UK on Thursday morning - but ranked behind "#WorstPlacesToBeStranded".

The Times and The Sun - owned by Mr Murdoch's News Corp - have traditionally been the key swing voices on Fleet Street, courted by politicians of all the main parties. But since the phone-hacking scandal, Mr Murdoch has fewer friends in Westminster and has posted derogatory messages about both Mr Miliband and David Cameron on Twitter.

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Mr Miliband, who trumpeted his decision to criticise Mr Murdoch ahead of many other politicians, told the comedian-activist Russell Brand this week that Mr Murdoch was "less powerful than he used to be". Labour has promised to implement the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry into press ethics, which have so far been sidestepped by much of the newspaper industry.

George Brock, a professor of journalism at City University, said that attacks on Ed Miliband by some newspapers had "backfired" - allowing him to exceed expectations. "If you are looking at where the bulk of people get the bulk of their information, it remains mainstream channel television," Mr Brock added.

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