Only two British newspapers failed to feature a picture of Jo Cox on their front pages today, as the terrorist killer of the MP was jailed: the Financial Times and the Daily Mail.

The editorial judgment is unsurprising, as far as the Financial Times is concerned. The neo-Nazi loner Thomas Mair was found guilty of murdering Cox on the same day as the first autumn statement from the chancellor, Philip Hammond. And for a financial newspaper that considers itself more global than British, this meant the news led its front-page briefing column instead.

Far-right terrorist Thomas Mair jailed for life for Jo Cox murder Read more

But for Britain’s biggest-selling mid-market tabloid, the Daily Mail, not to refer to Cox and her killer until page 30 was not only surprising but a shock.

Nearly all other papers put a smiling picture of the Labour MP and mother of two young children on their front page on the day her killer received a full life sentence – even if they led their news coverage on the economy.

So what happened at the Mail? And what does it say about that paper’s view of – and impact on – the UK’s political life that the verdict on the first murder of a sitting MP for 26 years can be relegated so far inside its pages?

The story about Mair’s sentence came after a full 17 pages welcoming the verdict of an “upbeat chancellor” confounding those dastardly “remain doom-mongers”. In the pages that followed this autumn statement coverage came news reports about “laughing migrants”, photos of a bikini-clad model taking a shower and the headline news that Santa is not real. They also featured a full-page column asking why leftwing comics laugh at the Queen.

It is surely worth asking whether the threat from far-right extremist terrorists is taken seriously by the British press

When today’s Mail finally gets to the verdict on Mair, the main headline points out that he “wanted to kill his own mother”, while the secondary story asks: “Did neo-Nazi murder Jo over fear he’d lose council house he grew up in?”

Most newspapers (certainly not just the Guardian) cited the judge’s own verdict that Mair killed her to advance his violent white supremacist ideology rather than because he “suspected the MP might not have helped him” to fight the council’s bid to move him.

The introduction to the Mail piece – which states that Mair “may have murdered MP Jo Cox because he feared losing his home of 40 years to an immigrant family” – prompted law professor James Chalmers to tweet “turns out there really is nothing the Daily Mail can’t blame on immigrants”.

James Chalmers (@ProfChalmers) Turns out there really is nothing the Daily Mail can't blame on immigrants. pic.twitter.com/5jLMr5Ic9k

The evidence of his fear of losing his council house comes from interviews with Mair’s neighbours and, largely, his stepfather’s half-sister. There is, however, no mention of how close the relationship was between a white supremacist and the family of his black stepfather.

There are of course several arguments that can be made by the Mail and its many fans about its placement of this particular story: newspapers make tricky editorial decisions every day; they wanted to feature this across two pages free of advertising; and, for the paper’s huge number of online readers, where the story sits in the paper won’t actually matter. (Although it’s worth noting that Mail Online again highlighted Mair’s mental health and thoughts of matricide rather than his extreme ideology.)

And yet the Mail’s carefully crafted and hugely successful print edition is read by almost more people than any other daily paper in Britain (and is fast approaching the most widely read of all, the Sun). It is surely worth asking whether the threat from far-right extremist terrorists is taken seriously by the British press, or at least its most politically powerful publication.

On the day Cox was killed the Mail’s front page focused on the tragic waste of a woman “brutally murdered by a loner with a history of mental illness” as did many others. This was a week before the EU referendum, and Mair’s shouts of “Britain first” and “This is for Britain” were probably considered incendiary.

Should Thomas Mair be considered a terrorist? | Hugh Muir and Joseph Harker Read more

Yet Mair’s trial and most notably the judge’s verdict suggested that there was far more to his crime than the evil act of a mentally ill man.

When Lee Rigby’s killers were found guilty of a terrorist act, they were not called simply mentally ill but ideologically motivated. When Ian Gow, the last sitting MP to be killed, died in 1990, the members of the Provisional IRA who did it were not called simply unhinged.

These are politically dangerous times. The EU referendum and the US election have shown that fears over immigration and the economy are real and divisive.

So it is even more important that the media, which prides itself on real, not fake news, does not hide the true story – however unpleasant or contrary to their own worldview it might be.