If ever proof were needed that headline writers set the tone at the Daily Mail, the newspaper’s online report delivered soon after Tuesday’s ruling from the supreme court provides it.
Above a fairly straightforward news story about the court’s decision to allow the country’s elected representatives a vote on the biggest constitutional upheaval in a generation, initially the headline read: “Yet again the elite show their contempt for Brexit voters!”
Launched within an hour of the verdict, the headline went on: “Supreme Court rules Theresa May CANNOT trigger Britain’s departure from the EU without MPs’ approval … as Remain campaigners gloat.” The copy itself provided little evidence of gloating.
The Mail’s first take response was tougher even than that of its rival pro-Brexit tabloids, which have made no secret of their antipathy to any attempt to delay Britain’s departure from the European Union. The first story in the Express accused judges of “thwarting the will of 17m Britons”, while the Sun originally went with an exhortation to “Just Get On with it!” before a headline that made it less clear who exactly should be getting on with anything: “Theresa May loses Supreme Court Brexit battle forcing MPs vote – but Prime Minister vows to get it out of the way before March – even if Corbyn plots ‘absurd’ appeal to EU.”
Reports launched within minutes of the historic and complex vote are very much the first draft of history, but these stories nevertheless underline how the Mail has led the way with virulent, hard-hitting coverage during the EU referendum campaign and subsequent political upheaval.
Reporters on the Mail know the score. Even if their copy is straight down the line, they expect barbs to be added in the headline and captions.
A headline that accuses supreme court judges of being elitist and contemptuous counts as positively mild, of course, when compared with the most controversial of the Mail’s headlines during the whole imbroglio.
Last November a front page that called the supreme court judges Enemies of the People who had “declared war on democracy” prompted 1,600 complaints to the press regulator Ipso, and international revulsion. Not least because the phrase was __more typically associated with murderous revolutionary leaders in both Soviet Russia and France, as well as dictatorships ever since.
Ipso took no action over those complaints, pointing out that as the press code of conduct “gives newspapers the right to editorialise and campaign” it was neither inaccurate nor misleading to call judges “enemies of the people”.
Yet comparisons were swiftly made between that headline and a Nazi newspaper from 1933 that used the same construct – head and shoulder shots and abusive headline. Full Fact, an independent website, pointed out that the Nazis included journalists and politicians and not just judges, however.
Read some of the hundreds of comments below the Mail’s news story and it seems clear that some would not see that as such a leap. One of the most popular comments an hour after the decision read: “After we leave the EEC people should turn their attention to reforming the Establishment, staring with the House of Commons, The Lords and The Judicial system. They are not fit for purpose.”
As ever with the Mail, it is through its print front pages that its editor-in-chief, Paul Dacre, likes to set the agenda rather than the first online reports. Dacre did indeed come back from his annual January break to edit today’s paper.
Immediately after the ruling, Downing Street said that it would “respect” the judgment. It remains to be seen whether the Mail will follow suit.