Paper Tigers

There are Labour people who flatly refuse to believe that The Times or The Sun advocated a Labour vote even under Tony Blair. 

But since those people never bought those papers, then their misunderstanding can be understood. However, there are also huge numbers of people who did buy those papers throughout that period and who also denied that then, as they deny it now.

In the same way, most people who are still buying the Daily Telegraph have presumably failed to notice that it has gone Blue Blairite, and that it now just supports whatever Theresa May happens to say, which will very soon be staying in the EU in all but name, if that. The softening up is very well under way.

After all, people still buy The Guardian, which has become unrecognisable in a very short period of time, and either effectively or actually edited by MI6. People will still buy the born again Remainer Daily Mail. 

And people are still buying the Daily Express even now that it is part of the Mirror Group, meaning that, while it is no friend of Arthur Scargill and not much of a friend of Jeremy Corbyn, it is no friend of Nigel Farage or Jacob Rees-Mogg, either. 

Indeed, it is the printer on which the People's Press Printing Society insists to print the Morning Star. But beyond the odd columnist, and Peter Hitchen's column does not make the Mail on Sunday a Brexit paper any more than Giles Fraser's had that effect on The Guardian, being part of the company that prints the Morning Star is the last link between the Daily Express and support for Brexit.

Yet people still buy it. They still read it. They still believe it. It will still affect how they vote, however "reluctantly", in the second referendum: "However contrary to our own instincts it may be in this instance, we need to trust the Prime Minister, Theresa May, to whom the only alternative is the [fill in the blanks] Jeremy Corbyn."

The same goes for The Times. The same is already starting to go for the Daily Telegraph. The same is about to start going for the Daily Mail. And the same will go, soon enough, for The Sun.