Theresa May is fighting for her future as prime minister, according to Britain’s newspapers, which have issued damning verdicts on the Conservatives’ failure to win a majority in the general election.

The Sun and the Daily Mail, which heavily supported May and criticised Jeremy Corbyn in the run-up to the election, said senior Conservatives had turned on the prime minister and that she could be forced to step down within six months.

The Sun’s front-page headline, over a photo of May eating chips, was “She’s had her chips,” while the Daily Mail said: “Tories turn on Theresa.” The Mail described the prime minister’s election campaign as “disastrous” and said the Conservatives had been “plunged into civil war”.

The front page of Saturday’s Daily Mail. Photograph: Daily Mail

It its editorial comment, the Sun said May’s speech outside Downing Street on Friday was “thoroughly disheartening” and that voters had sent the Conservatives “deafening messages”. These messages, it added, were: “That young people need a better deal. That Britain wants more spent on health and schools.”

On the future of May, the Sun said: “There is not yet an obvious replacement as Tory PM. But Mrs May cannot possibly continue governing as she does, to the exclusion of her cabinet and her party. It MUST change today.”

However, the newspaper also resumed its criticism of Corbyn and Labour: “He offered limitless, impossible-to-fund bribes and still lost, coming second in votes and seats. His glee yesterday was partly relief that he doesn’t actually have to find the money.

“The idea he is a political genius is laughable. But that is not to say he didn’t put his finger on something. Young people are sick of being shortchanged compared with past generations.”

The Daily Mail said it had been a “dreadful night for the Conservatives, Brexit and a future for this country that had looked remarkably bright”.

Nonetheless, it added: “That said, it was far from the worst possible result. We will not have to endure, thank God, the nightmare of terrorist-sympathising, economically illiterate Marxists in Downing Street. In fact, Theresa May won 790,000 more votes than Labour – more, indeed, than Tony Blair’s landslide in 1997 – making Jeremy Corbyn’s ludicrous claim of victory ring decidedly hollow.”

The Mail said that young voters who backed Corbyn “have no memory of the bloodletting atrocities of the IRA, whose cause Mr Corbyn and his crony John McDonnell so sickeningly championed” and also do not remember “the economic meltdown of the seventies, when over-mighty unions ruled the roost, cheered on by the pair of them”.

The Mail also renewed its attack on the “blatant bias” of the BBC, which it said was “letting Mr Corbyn off the hook time and time again”.

The newspaper has supported May since her election at Conservative leader and stood by her despite the result. It said: “Despite the massive setback, this paper believes she has considerable strengths and deserves the chance to prove she has learned the lessons of this sorry campaign. More pertinently, we fear a leadership election could tear the Tories to pieces. With the public sick of elections, it would be crazy for MPs to undermine the support Mrs May needs to implement the people’s will over Brexit.”

However, the Daily Telegraph and the Times, which, like the Sun and Mail, supported the Conservatives before the election, also warned that May’s future was at risk. The Times’s front page said: “May stares into the abyss.”

Saturday’s Times took a similar line. Photograph: The Times

In a critical editorial, the Times said it was “almost painful to imagine” what the Queen said in small talk to May when she asked her to form a government. It said the Conservatives have now “massively miscalculated” the British people twice in the past two years with “momentous consequences”.

The newspaper said: “The Conservatives’ calamitous showing in the election has left Britain effectively leaderless at a moment when its fate depends on leadership.

“This crisis has been years in the making. Mrs May’s party believes that government is in its DNA. Yet it has failed to win a majority in five of the past six general elections and it has left the country all but ungovernable as a consequence of two extraordinary miscalculations.

“Mrs May is now fatally wounded. If she does not realise this it is another grave misjudgment. More likely, she is steeling herself to provide what continuity she can as her party girds itself for an election to replace her.”

The editorial said that May’s decision to stay on was “the right one in the short term” given the Brexit negotiations, but her position was “untenable in the longer term”.

More criticism for May from the Guardian. Photograph: The Guardian

The Guardian, which backed Labour, said May and the Conservatives had gone from “hubris to humiliation” during the election campaign. The newspaper said the result of the vote was a “call for a different Britain”. It added: “Britain has rejected Mrs May’s divisive banalities. The result this week was very unexpected. But it is also very exciting. It is the cry of the revived possibility for a better and fairer Britain than we have known for at least a decade.”



May was also criticised for looking to strike a deal with the DUP of Northern Ireland in order to form a government. The Daily Mirror accused May of forming a “coalition of crackpots” and pointed out that the Northern Irish party opposes gay marriage and abortion.

The Mirror said in its editorial that May had “betrayed” the country by calling the election and that “Brexit means Exit” for the prime minister.

May’s setback will raise questions about the influence of newspapers on the electorate, given that the majority strongly backed her and the Conservatives. The Guardian reported last week that some of the most shared articles on social media about the general election were from partisan blogs such as Another Angry Voice, The Canary and Evolve Politics, which backed Labour.

The Sun had urged its readers not to “chuck Britain in the Cor-bin” in its last edition before the election, provoking a backlash on social media, while on Wednesday the Daily Mail devoted 13 pages to attacking Labour, Corbyn, Diane Abbott and McDonnell under the headline “Apologists for terror”.

The Sun is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. John Prescott, the former deputy leader of the Labour party, tweeted on Thursday night that he had heard from a “very good source” that Murdoch had “stormed out” of the Times’s election party after seeing the exit poll, which predicted that the Conservatives would fail to win a majority.

Murdoch attended the party at News UK’s offices in London and did leave after the exit poll, sources said. However, they disputed the suggestion that he had “stormed out”, and said he returned later. A collection of editorial staff left the party after the exit poll was published at 10pm in order to work on the newspaper and website, with Murdoch understood to have left at about 11pm. News UK declined to comment.