The Daily Mail has either undergone a conversion on the road to Damascus or is simply bowing to the inevitable. Recent headlines seem highly critical of Brexit and its aftermath without the usual spin or attempts to argue that a drag anchor on our economy is in some strange way a benefit to be celebrated. The DM also prides itself on giving its readers what they want and perhaps falling sales may have prompted a change of editorial position simply for commercial reasons. It would indicate the DM readership is changing and maybe we can even begin to see evidence of it.
Edwin Hayward highlighted four such headlines:
Something major has happened to the Daily Mail. A dam appears to have broken.4 of its last 5 Brexit headlines have been "true" (allowing for their knee-jerk anti-EU house style).That's absolutely astonishing. And they're not minor issue stories either.Sea change on its way? pic.twitter.com/eN4zZadZf4— Edwin Hayward (@edwinhayward) May 2, 2024
These are all from the last few days and as Hayward says, they are all 'true' which is quite something from the Mail.
However, I want to focus on just one. This is the story about Britons facing higher grocery bills because of post-Brexit border checks on animal and plant-based products imported from the EU. These are the sanitary and phytosanitary checks which started last Tuesday in a technical and theoretical sense rather than any real or practical way. Logistics businesses, importers, exporters, and consumers are paying for the checks although trucks are simply being waved through ports of entry to avoid disrupting our own food supply chains.
The DM story explains it all straight, but the 365 comments (and counting) below the article are fascinating and perhaps give a clue to what's going on at the Daily Mail Group.
Here are a few screenshots of typical comments.
I didn't have to search among the responses either, these are just randomly picked off the top of the list. As far as I can see, nobody is suggesting higher food prices are worth paying for extra 'sovereignty' and nobody is launching vitriolic attacks on the readers who criticise Brexit.
The crazed Brexit supporters among DM readers, which used to be most of them in fact, have fallen silent or now recognise they were duped in 2016 or both. It proves there is a limit to how much you can gaslight a population before they realise what they are being told no longer accords with reality or perception.
There have been no benefits of Brexit whatsoever and people know it. President Macron is right when in another DM story, he says Brexit has impoverished the UK and done nothing to solve the immigration problem. In fact, immigration policy is now a basket case. The number of immigrants is soaring, we are desperately short of skilled workers and we can’t return failed asylum seekers who cross the Channel in boats. How does that possibly work?
I think we can award the prize for the most stupid and misguided comment on these new SPS checks to Ross Clark in another right-wing organ, The Spectator, part of The Telegraph Media Group. He writes: Brexit has not made food unaffordable.
His piece concludes: "So, no, Brexit hasn’t made food unaffordable for UK consumers – and the new checks are not going to change that, even if they will be unwelcome, and will add cost, for many food importers."
Well, that's alright then, eh? There's always one, isn't there?
