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11th May 2017

There’s a spectacular piece of hypocrisy on today’s Daily Mail front page

You'd think it wouldn't be surprising anymore, and yet...

Rich Cooper

Oh look, who’s that at the helm of the H.M.S. Virtuousness? Why, it’s the Daily Mail! Look out chaps, that’s an awfully large chunk of hypocrisy you’re about to crash into.

Another day, another screaming Daily Mail front page. This time it’s all about the leaked Labour manifesto which, depending on your political bent, would either send the country back 40 years or implement some reasonable but potentially expensive measures.

The draft manifesto outlines Labour’s plans to renationalise railways and take energy companies into public ownership, scrap tuition fees, ban zero-hour contracts, build at least 100,000 council and housing association houses a year, as well as refusing to make “false promises” on immigration and cautiousness over Trident and nuclear weapons.

There was never any question over which way the Mail was going to go on this; to put it broadly, they weren’t enamoured with it.

‘Back to the 1970s’ is the claim, but a number of people noted that there was something a little hypocritical about this particular front page, namely the apparent clash in values between the top story and a column by Sarah Vine.

https://twitter.com/matthaig1/status/862573172524240896

Vine’s column is in reference to Theresa May and husband Phillip’s appearance on The One Show, where they talked about their division of household labour. Phillip said he takes the bins out, with the Prime Minister adding: “There’s boy jobs and girl jobs you see.”

The hypocrisy of scaremongering over Jeremy Corbyn’s plans to “drag us back to the 1970s” while advocating retrograde gender roles is pretty clear to see. Of course, the Mail couldn’t give a single toss, but hey, always good to be reminded.