Tabloid claims ‘Jeremy Corbyn and his closest associates have spent their careers cosying up to those who hate our country’

The pre-election edition of the Daily Mail devoted 13 pages to attacking Labour, Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott and John McDonnell under the headline: “Apologists for terror.”

The tabloid urged readers to support the Conservatives in an editorial on its first and second pages but concentrated its fire on Labour’s leadership, compiling hostile anecdotes dating to the 1970s.

The Mail’s leading article said it had no doubt Corbyn’s “expressions of horror” over the recent terrorists attacks in Britain were genuine, but added “the ineluctable truth is that the Labour leader and his closest associates have spent their careers cosying up to those who hate our country, while pouring scorn on the police and security services and opposing anti-terror legislation over and over and over again”.

Other attack articles in the Mail included a collection of quotes from Corbyn, McDonnell and Abbott that the newspaper said was “proof Corbyn and Co are unfit to rule”, a story headlined “Revealed: Labour plan to crash house prices” and criticism of the BBC’s coverage of the election.

The Mail singled out Mishal Husain, who presents the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 and moderated a party leaders’ debate , for particular criticism. Husain “made little attempt to rein in the Corbynista mob in full cry and appeared out of her depth” during the debate, Andrew Pierce wrote in the Mail.

Husain also adopted an “aggressive, even menacing tone”, according to the tabloid during an interview with Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, on the Today programme, Pierce added.

The Sun, which endorsed Theresa May and the Conservative party, ran a front-page story under the headline “Jezza’s Jihadi Comrades”. The newspaper reported that Corbyn had delivered an “incendiary speech” at a demo that was attended by followers of the Islamic clerics Anjem Choudary and Omar Bakri Muhammad.



In its editorial encouraging readers to vote for the Conservatives, the Sun said that Britain would be a “global laughing stock” if Corbyn was elected prime minister.

The newspaper, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, said: “This is not the moderate Labour of Tony Blair. It is not the Labour of Kinnock or even Miliband. Your vote would be to install Britain’s first Marxist government.

“A generation after the end of the Soviet Union, the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of almost every ruinous and oppressive hard-Left regime worldwide, you would be helping to establish a new one, right here in Britain. It would be the gravest mistake this country has ever made.”

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Other press endorsements for the Conservatives came from the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Times. Labour has won the support of the Daily Mirror and the Guardian, with the Economist supporting the Liberal Democrats.