So there we have it: the Sun newspaper has today officially announced its endorsement of the Conservative Party going into the general election of 2010. According to Conservative Home, "failure to address Sun readers' concerns about Europe, the Lisbon Treaty and the treatment of our armed forces" are among the principle reasons for this desertion.

This comes as a blow to Labour, whom the paper has consistently backed for the last 12 years, and particularly to Brown, heaping further misery on a party already in freefall.

That the newspaper has chosen the morning after Brown's keynote speech to drop this hefty bombshell seems particularly poignant. Ed Miliband has tried fervently to play down the significance of the result, quipping that "people decide elections not newspapers". He seems to forget the tabloid media's ability to mobilise the swing voter class of this country - one needs only think to Kinnock's fall from grace based almost entirely on a retraction of support from the Sun.

Particularly worrying for Labour is that it is truly impossible to discern any real talent among the rising 'stars' of the party whatsoever. Purnell and Cruddas lead a fairly poor bunch of MPs whose role it will be to steer the party clear of complete dissolution. Could it just be that we are witnessing the end of Labour as we know it? With the party trailing 3rd in the latest polls for the first time in decades, the Labour-Conservative dynamic could be truly and irrevocably rattled at the next election.

Only time will tell.