Angry mum takes on PM Brown – thanks to the Sun

If you believe Lord Mandelson - and there's no reason not to on this occasion - the Sun is swinging into full election mode. The Rupert Murdoch paper announced in September that it was withdrawing support from Labour and would back the Tories in the upcoming general election, and, well, here they come.

The paper's first cause celebre of what looks like being a long winter is the case of Jacqui Janes, the mother of a 20-year-old Grenadier Guard who died on duty in Afghanistan on October 5.

When the PM wrote his letter of condolence - he sends one in every case of a soldier dying on duty - he mistakenly addressed it to Mrs James, instead of Janes, and included what appeared to be other spelling mistakes.

The dead soldier's mother was livid. She told the Sun that the letter was "an insult" to her son Jamie, who died in an explosion while on foot patrol in Helmand province.

"The letter was scrawled so quickly I could hardly even read it and some of the words were half-finished. It's just disrespectful." She said the PM "couldn't even be bothered to get our family name right".

The 47-year-old went on: "That made me so angry. Then I saw he had scribbled out a mistake in Jamie's name. The very least I would expect from Gordon Brown is to get his name right."

Brown was said to be mortified when told of her distress and arranged a telephone call in which he blamed his bad handwriting and tried to apologise.

This is where Lord Mandelson steps into the story. He admitted that Brown's handwriting was "not great" but said that the public needed to understand that the row with Mrs Janes was being orchestrated by a paper that was actively campaigning against Labour.

According to the Sun, which reported the story on Monday under the front page headline 'Bloody shameful', Mrs Janes threw the letter across the room in disgust when she received it a few days after Jamie's death. But they did not report on Monday that Brown had telephoned Mrs Janes on Sunday night to apologise.

The paper saved that until this morning, when it continued its front-page assault with a report of "an amazing late-night phone bust-up" between the PM and "a grieving Forces mum" which Mrs Janes had somehow managed to record.

The Sun reports that Brown tried to deny the spelling mistakes and that the conversation then turned into a row about the shortage of helicopters in Afghanistan, with Mrs Janes claiming that her son bled to death because there was not a helicopter available to airlift him to the hospital.

"I don't know why he called," she told the paper. "It felt like he was trying to put me right instead of make me feel better."

Brown's team can expect the Sun to milk this for as long as possible. In the meantime, the PM did get some good news today - which ironically came from the Sun's stablemate.

A Populus poll published today in the Times finds the British people are more optimistic about the economy than at any time for the past 18 months.

The Times has more good news too: high street retail sales in October were the best for seven years and the paper "understands" that Alistair Darling is likely cut business taxes next month.

This report will perhaps please Murdoch, who claimed in a TV interview broadcast in Australia that he "regrets" that the Sun has turned against Brown ­ but believes it was right to do so.

Asked about his relationship with his editors, he claimed to play less of a role than was popularly assumed. "The editors in Britain, for instance, have turned very much against Gordon Brown, who is a friend of mine. I regret it."

Did he therefore disagree with his editors' decision? "No, I think they're probably right that he has been a disappointment as a prime minister. He has been an unlucky man." ·