Right-Wing Media Watch: Express’ Brexit scare stories are ageing as badly as its front pages

The Sunday Express served up another Brexit howler last week, declaring on its front page: “EU would ‘plunder’ Britain if Brexit reversed.”

The article centres on warnings to Andy Burnham that reversing Brexit would allow the EU to “plunder” Britain and betray his Makerfield constituents. The source of this alarm is Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who accused the PM of wanting to plunge the country into another era of “tedious and divisive Brexit debates,” ahead of the landmark UK-EU summit next month.

What the Express conspicuously omitted was the growing evidence that public opinion has shifted since the 2016 referendum.

A recent YouGov poll found that most Britons would vote to rejoin the EU if given another referendum, with just 27% opting to remain outside.

Nor does the Express’ scare story stand up particularly well in Burnham’s own constituency. Although 65% of Makerfield voters backed Leave in 2016, a Best for Britain poll found that just 38% would now vote to stay outside the EU, compared with 45% who would vote to rejoin.

These figures hardly support the idea that closer ties with Europe would amount to a betrayal of local voters. Instead, they suggest the political ground has shifted considerably since Brexit, something the Express’ front page was in no hurry to acknowledge.

Needless to say, the article prompted criticism online.

 “The Express and its readers are running scared,” wrote Sheffield for Europe.

 “If it’s in the Express, I automatically believe the opposite,” was another comment.

One reader joked that the Express was useful for “lining the rabbit hutch.”

A selection of previous Daily Express front pages also circulated online, reminding how confidently the newspaper has thrown its weight behind political figures and predictions that have subsequently aged rather badly.

Among them were “Only Cameron can save Britain,” “Vote May or we face disaster,” “Down but not out! Why we MUST put faith in Boris,” and, perhaps most memorably, “Put faith in Truss to deliver for Britain.”

The common thread is a style of political campaigning that relies on dramatic warnings, urgent appeals and emotive language, rather than a sustained examination of the evidence. The paper’s latest Brexit headline follows the same familiar formula: present renewed engagement with Europe as a looming catastrophe while giving little attention to polling suggesting that public attitudes have moved on.

For a newspaper so fond of predicting disaster, Express front pages offer a timely reminder that its political certainties have a habit of ageing badly.