The Daily Mail, Sun, Telegraph and Daily Express all used their election day front pages to support Conservative victory.
They were the four most forthright Fleet Street supporters of Brexit last year and today sought to use their influence to help Theresa May win the general election.
The Sun used its first nine pages to make the case for a Tory win, lampooning Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on the front with the headline: “Don’t chuck Britain in the Cor-bin”.
In a front-page leader it warned Corbyn would “chuck our country’s spectacular progress and prosperity over the last 35 years in the bin”.
Inside it evoked the spirit of Barack Obama with the headline “Tez we can” across pages two and three and reported the Tory leader’s plea to Labour supporters that voting Conservative was the patriotic option.
Across pages 8 and 9 it warns of “Apocalypse Mau” if Jeremy Corbyn is elected predicting that by 2020 Britain would see “shops boarded up, rise in jobless, power cuts, strikes, soaring inflation, tax hikes, plummeting house prices, uncontrolled immigration, riots…”
The Daily Mail front page also reports Theresa May’s call for Labour supporters to vote Tory “in the national interest”, as does the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express.
The Daily Telegraph also carried a front-page comment piece from Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of Britain’s secret intelligence, which said: “the leader of the Labour Party is an old-fashioned international socialist who has forged links with those quite ready to use terror when they haven’t got their way: the IRA, Hizbollah, Hamas. As a result he is completely unfit to govern and Britain would be less safe with him in No 10”.
Today the Labour party’s only front page support comes from its traditional supporter, the Daily Mirror, which attacks Theresa May’s honesty with the headline: “Lies, damn lies and Theresa May.”
Labour’s only other Fleet Street supporter, The Guardian, plays it straight on the front page – as does The Times, which gave May its grudging support in a leader column yesterday.
Free London Daily City AM has told readers to vote for the Conservative Party on the front page of its polling day edition.
The business newspaper said “only the Conservatives can form a credible government”.
The pro-Remain paper added: “As for Brexit, you may not have voted for it – but who do you want negotiating it? May talks about wanting “an open, global, trading Britain” – and she has a much more developed sense of the City’s priorities than any of Corbyn’s crew.”
In Scotland the Daily Record backed Labour on its front page while the Scottish Sun appeared to give its support to Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP.
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