Seeing a lot of left-leaning people express shock at this, but it's entirely what I'd expect from the MoS, and their readers - not doing so is a classic example of not understanding your political opponents.
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Ah yes, the Left, famously known for their total lack of factional infighting, circular firing squads and violent disagreements on policy and philosophy
Does Trump know the King has also extended a meeting invite to Zelensky? The petition to stop the one for Trump is doing well. Mind he's not legally supposed to enter the UK anyway .. convicted felon etc.
Zelensky isn’t a state visit. It’s a visit to one of the King’s private homes. It’s a deliberate personal honour, a bigger personal honour, but a less public honour. I imagine that for a beleaguered war leader it’s a more welcome thing. It’s the opposite of what happened in the Oval Office.
I agree, I'd noted it was Sandringham... highly unusual, if not unheard of, so I took it to mean not only a compliment but easier for both to be private.
Trump's been offered a state visit, and there's a huge petition circulating to revoke it ... Brits hate him. They pretty much had to hide him from the protests and public mockery last time
First, compared with anywhere else in the West, UK support of Ukraine is both strong AND cross-politics. So is dislike of Trump. Only about a quarter of Tory voters have a favourable view on Trump. Even among Reform, it's probably lower than you'd expect.
Support for Ukraine is a huge civic movement here. You still see the flags in the smallest villages. For the MoS in particular, it really aligns with their world view. Security hawks most of the time, but also pretty imbued with the World War Two narrative.
Both small country standing up to the dictator, AND the UK leading the world are things they like.
And if you are running a newspaper, it's your job to know what lands with your audience. Sometimes you follow them on issues, sometimes you lead them - but you always need to align to their world view
For the mainstream right in this country, that remains heavily anti-Trump, pro-Ukraine. If you don't get that, you are thinking in stereotypes rather than evidence. And that will blind you on other issues too.
But it took Trump & Vance's humiliation of Zelensky to act as their tipping point to criticise Trump.
And they can now use this issue to attack Starmer in the future, - either he honours his invitation to Trump, to howls of protest, or he cancels it 'under pressure from their readership' ...
As a brown-woman American, I'm mostly familiar with the Daily Mail for its coverage of Megan and Harry. Seeing its repudiation of Trump was delightful.
It's weird - I can definitely see the ordinary provincially racist Tory voter not being impressed with Trump but I'm more impressed with the Mail actually voicing it.
Well Putin is 100% a cartoon villain and this war is as about as close as you can get to a good guys / bad guys conflict, so it’s not surprising that some Archie Bunker types would feel this way.
…which makes it all the more repulsive that Trump and his supporters are getting cozy with Putin.
1/2 Sure but the left tends to define the right by reference to specific persons and entities (eg Farage, Badenoch, the Tory Party, the Mail) not some amorphous group of voters: & the right was looking bizarrely Trumpey (bizarre if you look at public opinion). The mistake wasn’t whether Mrs Bucket..
My MIL's head has exploded over all this. Had the 'pleasure' of her extolling Trump over Christmas - 'he gets things done' and now he's a wrong 'un for what he's done to Zelensky. I daresay she still loves Brexit, Boris and Farage though. FML.
So is the *trend* in the UK mainstream right towards groyperization? I just tend to assume anyone who can read English and who isn't on the left is pretty much a groyper already.
The key is whether this is a sustained Anti-Trump turn from MAGA curious leaders who now realise it doesn’t reflect their own voters. Or they continue to cheerlead on other Trump policies just not Ukraine. I imagine they’ll continue to try the former.
Also the right wing media is divided on this - Murdoch is lining up with Trump. The Tories haven’t really been separable from the right wing media since 1980. What IS the Tory party without a united right wing media behind it ?
It's also a nice spanner in the world for Starmer trying to walk the tightrope balancing relations between the two allies. So they get to be patriotic and pose a conundrum for Labour.
As an only partially reformed one-time Corbyn supporter Ukraine is basically the only safe topic of politics I have with my neighbours in my rural, Tory-voting area.
Spot on - also echoes of 'plucky little Belgium'. It highlights how people in cities have a limited understanding of the politics of rural England which are in some ways much more progressive and radical than people give credit for.
Yeah I still see Ukraine flags all over the place which is why this *didn't* take me by surprise. Besides even during his first term I saw die-hard Tories disgusted by how utterly craven and tasteless he is.
One thing to note is that the Conservative Party is fundamentally conservative. Trump, MAGA and the GOP are absolutely not conservative. They are radical fascists.
every other group has some outliers and some data points that might need cleaned up, but that chunk of people who are tories, will answer a survey and don't have an opinion on Trump in 2024 are straight up living in narnia, right?
Fully take your point about the data, but before seeing that I think you could be forgiven for thinking the MoS would go the other way with this. After all, it has form supporting fascists...
WHY would they be shocked? They have eyes and ears. They have seen it ALL. Trumphole will just go THERE and have a hissy fit for NOT GETTING HIS WAY. As a citizen of the United States of America I personally don't want him ANYWHERE to embarrass our country anymore. He doesn't speak for us.
It's an uncomfortable truth that Europeans on the left, or at any rate the democratic left, need to get used to: when fascists are your enemies, conservatives are your friends.
J Jackass
D Delusional
V Vicious
A Asshole
N Naive
C Corrupt
E Egomaniac
Members of Congress-Democrat and Republican:
🙏
Boycott the speech
Wear Putin mask
Trun your back in protest
Make it clear--we won't accept his destruction of our democracy!!
They were OK with the sex assaults, rape, multiple felonies, fraud, insurrection, lies, mocking disabled people, hoarding classified documents, threatening a Commonwealth country, etc?
I understand the support for ukraine and the nostalgia for uk leading the fight in ww2. But the mail has continually supported trump and attacked starmer.
I'm so sick of tankie entryists suborning the Left and now creeping into the Green party.
This whole vacillation over the Salisbury poisonings and assassination attempts in London, the Russophile apologias for Ukraine invasion, all of it.
It's NOT socialist and it's not green.
Block putinistas.
Then a lot of your left friends are ghouls, sorry to say. No sympathy for Zelenskyy, okay, he’s not everyone’s cup of tea. No sympathy for Ukraine = ghoul.
I'm curious: do you think it's because they never met anyone from Eastern Europe so they never had a chance to ask their opinion - or they are so progressively antiracist they just don't care about Ukrainians, Poles, Latvians etc?
It's way more complicataed than that. There are plenty of Eastern European themselves who are Russia-friendly, in Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and so on. Latin Americans really don't have a lot of sympathy for Ukraine either, which they reflexively see as an American-ally (therefore evil).
Deeply stupid and self-serving narratives since these are the same people screaming "Gaza" but who don't give a shit for the Uyghurs (some of whom are being deported to their certain deaths from Thailand this week back to China), Ukraine or Sudan.
Do you happen to personally know an Eastern European person who is Russia-friendly? That's curious! Ever asked them why they moved to your country, not to Russia?
Yes, I've known a few. The answer is obvious! They don't want to live in Russia because it's a hellhole and they know it but on the other hand: "why are damn Ukrainians/NATO so troublesome?"
In my experience it’s as simple as “does the US support this, if so it’s bad”. Then add some mixed up ideas that Russia is still the Soviet Union and that the Soviet Union was on the side of The People.
We live in cosmopolitan area with people from all around the world (inc Ukraine) so it's not unfamiliarity. Some of it is residential left loyalty to Russia, some of it is deep mistrust of 'the West'/the USA and NATO.
To trust the West is one thing (we all here in the East remember this and that), but to be "pro-Russian" is another. I mean, they all must at least know the basic fact that Russia is a hellhole, right? So... how come they are indifferent about it?
I think this is a symptom of what I call the Oedipal left. They hate 'Daddy' (Capitalism, the West, Nato, USA) with such a libidinal passion, they have lost the capacity to see Daddy's enemies as anything but allies in the great struggle so forgive them being warmongering totalitarian imperialists.
Lot of good points in this thread BUT worth remembering how out of sync with readers a lot of papers have become, incl on important issues. So I don't think it could be taken for granted (personally I wouldn't have expected them to be pro-Trump but was surprised to see them come out this hard)
With respect, I think your comment completely misses the significance of this.
People think anti-Trumpism is an elite preoccupation that the majority don’t share. But the Mail is an anti-elite tabloid calling for the highest insult to Trump.
That it’s not just elites is highly significant
The Mail is anti elite?
Boris, the royals, Farage, Dacre, Lord Rothermere etc. The Mail is not anti elite, it’s part of the elite. It may on occasion pretend to be anti elite when hypocrisy suits its agenda.
It’s a right wing tabloid targeting people who don’t habitually use their brains. That might be the elite in some corners of the UK, I guess. Certainly it describes Boris & Farage.
Perhaps it's because Reform UK is very much on the Russians side, so we'd expect the right in the UK, well those who support reform, parroting Pro Putin rhetoric 🤷♂️
I say let him go, confront him with mass protests, get him in a building, make him wait, then cancel the meeting to take a phone call from Zelenskyy instead. It's what I'd prefer to see. Make him feel little.
They wrote ‘BULLY’ in inverted commas as a dog whistle because they don’t really believe he’s a bully. It’s so fascists know they haven’t switched sides.
I don’t think it’s shock, exactly; more surprise that this is the precise stance taken. It’s not unexpected that many mainstream British conservatives are disgusted by the US regime’s behaviour.
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But your explanation make a lot of sense.
These generalisations are deeply unhelpful.
Trump's hair will fly off.
And yes, not sure I understand it. Except it intersects with their anti immigrant, anti woke streak.
They're pro Ukraine too, so expect some cognitive dissonance and U-turns in the offing.
They're all for some swastika adjacent icons and uniforms on the quiet.
And if you are running a newspaper, it's your job to know what lands with your audience. Sometimes you follow them on issues, sometimes you lead them - but you always need to align to their world view
And they can now use this issue to attack Starmer in the future, - either he honours his invitation to Trump, to howls of protest, or he cancels it 'under pressure from their readership' ...
…which makes it all the more repulsive that Trump and his supporters are getting cozy with Putin.
"Oh NOW he's gone too far!"
That was the line, huh? Being mean to the Ukranian president. Everything else until now was fine, I guess.
Not long after his took down his Vote Leave and then Vote Tory placards.
We have the very same phenomena in France and other contexts. For overknown demagog people/issues, people saying "neutral / DK" are mostly agreeing.
Guy: “Yeah.”
Comedian: “You daft c*nt.”
What on earth is wrong with the other 2?
SHOW YOURSELVES YOU PIECES OF SHIT
The *state visit* was his idea.
Today's Mail headline is the paper following its readership, not the other way around, and that's why it's noteworthy.
The paper wants to love Trump, but their readership won't accept Trump's recent behaviour.
Remember this...
R Rapist
U Unhinged
M Moron
P Psycho
J Jackass
D Delusional
V Vicious
A Asshole
N Naive
C Corrupt
E Egomaniac
Members of Congress-Democrat and Republican:
🙏
Boycott the speech
Wear Putin mask
Trun your back in protest
Make it clear--we won't accept his destruction of our democracy!!
But bullying?... that's bang out of order!
This whole vacillation over the Salisbury poisonings and assassination attempts in London, the Russophile apologias for Ukraine invasion, all of it.
It's NOT socialist and it's not green.
Block putinistas.
As De Gaulle would say.
People think anti-Trumpism is an elite preoccupation that the majority don’t share. But the Mail is an anti-elite tabloid calling for the highest insult to Trump.
That it’s not just elites is highly significant
Boris, the royals, Farage, Dacre, Lord Rothermere etc. The Mail is not anti elite, it’s part of the elite. It may on occasion pretend to be anti elite when hypocrisy suits its agenda.
You would reach more people, when you add a good description into the Alt-text field.
That is pretty easy, especially, when your image just contain text.
This way, you support visually impaired people and everyone else, who rely on a good filled Alt-text.
#accessibility
If that article is there it's The MoS.
I have no idea who you are having a go at here?