UK Prime Minister Theresa May shocked the nation Tuesday by announcing she will ask for a snap election on June 8.
How did today’s newspapers respond?
Celebrating the announcement as a “stunning move,” the Daily Mail, a right-wing tabloid paper, published an image of a steely-eyed Theresa May outside Downing Street yesterday above the headline “Crush the saboteurs.”
The vandals in question were named by May in her statement Tuesday — the unelected House of Lords, “who have vowed to fight us every step of the way” in the Brexit negotiations, along with the opposition parties who, she claims, are guilty of “political game-playing” over Brexit.
The Sun took an equally aggressive stance with the headline “Blue Murder,” blue being the color of May’s Conservative party. The paper claims the “snap poll will kill off Labour” and that May will “smash rebel Tories too,” using another name for the Conservatives.
The left-wing Daily Mirror channeled Margaret Thatcher to criticize May, who had previously said she would not call for an early election. “The lady IS for U-turning,” proclaimed the front page. “Yesterday she put herself and the Tories first,” the Mirror said.
When Thatcher was urged by members of her party to change her own policies in 1980, the “Iron Lady” famously replied: “You turn if you want to — the lady’s not for turning.”
The broadsheets tended to take a more measured tone. The Guardian, a liberal newspaper, announced May’s U-turn with the headline “May: give me my mandate,” highlighting what was seen as a somewhat combative tone to the Prime Minister’s announcement.
The more conservative Daily Telegraph described May’s statement as a “bolt from the blue” and highlighted the infighting in the opposition Labour party over the upcoming election. “Polls show Tories are on course to win a huge majority,” the paper announced.
The front page of the Times of London made a somewhat premature prediction for the outcome of an election that has only just been called for and is still seven weeks away: “May heads for election landslide.”
The Scotsman, Scotland’s main quality newspaper, took a different line. The election “will be a vote on Scottish independence,” it announced, quoting an article written by May for Monday’s edition.
In it, May called for Scottish voters to back the Conservatives in the election and to reject the Scottish National Party’s “divisive plans” for a vote on Scottish independence next year — a plan that has been rejected out of hand by Downing Street.