I read the paper every day for a week, so you didn’t have to. It offers a lurid stew of gruesome crime reporting, anti-Labour rants and stories about hot tubs
Many of us have strong opinions about the Daily Mail – but few of us actually read it, especially not in print. The Mail is probably still the UK’s best-selling newspaper, but only around 600,000 people a day actually buy it.
Traditionally, the print Mail was a different beast to its more celebrity-driven online counterpart, and it also had the distinction of being one of very few UK newspapers with more female readers than men. But what does the Mail look like in 2026, and what does spending a week with the Mail as your primary source of news feel like?
The editors of The New World decided I should find out, so what follows is a diary chronicling a week of buying and reading the Mail – not always an easy task in north London, where on one day it took me four shop visits to find a copy. As expected, there was crime, and there was Labour bashing. What I hadn’t expected was quite so many dresses. Or hot tubs.
Monday August 31
The big story of the day for the Mail is the early release scheme for prisoners – a headache Andy Burnham inherited from Keir Starmer, necessary to free up prison places to prevent a full-blown crisis in the criminal justice system.
The Mail front page greets the news with the headline “MORE DANGEROUS CRIMINALS SET TO BE RELEASED EARLY”, though it’s only on reading the story that a careful reader will discover that Burnham had altered the scheme to ensure that those convicted of killing PC Andrew Harper would not be among those let out – something the Mail had explicitly been demanding.
However, as there is a fixed number of prison places, not releasing some prisoners means releasing others earlier. The Mail gives its front page, a double-page spread, a full-page comment article, and the entirety of its leader column to the issue, allowing Conservative shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy to condemn the move.
Commentator Steven Glover asks of Burnham “what has he actually achieved in the six weeks since he wrested the seals of office from Keir Starmer? Very little”. The leader column decries Burnham’s “totally indefensible” choices and concludes “nothing we have seen so far indicates the Burnham government has the political judgment required to run the country”.
Sadly, having used all that space to write off Burnham after six weeks, the Mail does not find room to mention that the prison places crisis is, of course, the result of the 14-year Conservative government not building capacity at any stage of their time in office, and not making the decisions to deal with the consequences of that choice.
Still, there is room for some lighter topics. Daniel Hannan celebrates the decision of Iceland not to join the EU – “if a nation this small can go it alone, why would ANYONE want to reverse Brexit?” – apparently not noticing Iceland is within the single market and the Schengen free travel area, while Andrew Lownie worries about what the return of Fergie might mean for the royal family in general, and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in particular.
Don’t get too relaxed, though: the paper warns. “Do you have any of these features in your home?” it asks, showing pictures of a “nice view”, “big garage” or “conservatory”. “Then HMRC snoopers may hit you with the mansion tax”.
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Tuesday September 1
Most of today’s front page is given over to Kemi Badenoch’s shadow frontbench reshuffle. You might have thought Badenoch’s leadership of the Conservative Party has been dubious at best: she took over after the party’s worst election results since 1935, and its poll ratings have only dropped since, leaving it firmly moored behind Reform in third place.
Apparently, you’d be wrong. “Kemi gets Tories battle-ready with ruthless reshuffle”, the Mail’s front page declares. The newspaper’s leader column is even more upbeat. “She has grown steadily in stature since taking up the reins, and the bold reshuffle of her top team yesterday shows she is up for the fight,” it concludes. “Let the battle of ideas commence!”
Elsewhere, tales of government waste and delusion abound, and the implication is wokeism and out-of-date statist lefties are to blame. “Home Office splashes out £4,000 on tote bags,” the page two headline warns – for a story that reveals the figure covers the spending on tote bags and “bespoke lanyards” over the last three years, spending amounting to about £3.60 a day out of a departmental budget of £27.8bn a year. In the comment pages, Burnham is warned against “bringing back the clanking, wheezing ghost of British Rail”.
The rest of the front page, and all of page five, is given over to the sad tale of “pictured, mother, 51, who died trying in vain to save husband trapped in their holiday hot tub”, featuring commentary on “suction entrapment” from a “forensic engineer and aquatic safety expert”. Should readers be struggling to understand the story, it helpfully includes a picture of a “hot tub similar to one involved in deaths”.
Wednesday September 2
Three days into my new life as a Daily Mail reader, and on seeing today’s front page, I’m worried my politics might already be changing. “Britain’s problems? I blame Thatcher and Brexit, says Burnham”, reads its front-page headline. Sounds about right to me, I think. Only it turns out I’ve misunderstood, and was instead supposed to think Burnham was wrong about this. Helpfully, the Mail has explained this in a sub-heading: “No wonder Kemi mocked him for ‘living in the past’ as ‘Messiah without a mandate’ made his Commons debut as PM”. Oh. Maybe I’m not entirely on board yet.
The politics coverage in the paper is already predictable: there’s yet another story allowing the Conservatives to condemn Andy Burnham – PM for less than two months – for the prisons crisis, there’s furious coverage about defence spending, and dark warnings about bond chaos.
Most of that I’d expected. What caught me off guard is quite how much lurid and terrifying crime reporting is in here – there’s not just lots of it, but it’s set out in the kind of gratuitous detail I’d usually associate with airport thrillers or true crime podcasts. Still, seeing “Uncle, 83, knifed nephew, 65, to death then torched home in £20,000 inheritance row”, did feel like winning Daily Mail bingo.
The Mail also never misses an opportunity to show attractive, slightly older women, usually in elegant dresses. Plenty of room is given to the story of Brigitte Macron’s 42-year-old daughter, who is dating a man 20 years her junior – “JUST LIKE MAMAN!” A feature on weight-loss pills is illustrated by two Mail writers in elegant blue frocks. Page three is turned over to Nicole Kidman’s red-carpet dress, while Amal Clooney’s outfit choice for the Venice Film Festival also merits a full-page picture slot.
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Thursday September 3
At first, I think I’ve made a mistake and picked up yesterday’s paper – but it turns out the Mail is not just formulaic, it likes to feed its readers the same, or very similar, stories again and again. Today’s front page – “KEMI: I’LL SLASH BENEFITS BILL TO BOOST DEFENCE” (whether the Mail uses capitals or not for its headlines seems entirely random) – is more or less a rehash of a story it ran the day before.
A double-page spread warns that “the honeymoon’s over”, because of a “surge in gilts”, though buried among that reporting is a bizarre tale revealing that Kemi Badenoch had been denied “pre-election access talks” to civil servants, which she’d reportedly asked for because she had a hunch Burnham might call an early election. Outrageously, this claim is denied by cabinet secretary Antonia Romeo, on the simple grounds that there is… no impending election.
Page three is given over to a picture of Amal Clooney wearing a nice dress at the Venice Film Festival, though it turns out this is a different outfit than the one they ran yesterday. Page four’s lead is “The father, 48, who died with his wife trapped in holiday hot tub”, briefly causing me to wonder if there is a previously unreported epidemic of tragic hot tub deaths. Instead, it turns out the Mail now has a picture of the man who died, and a picture of the actual hot tub involved, instead of one that’s merely “similar”.
Today’s lurid crime story is a particularly gruesome one, in which “mother among four charged with murdering newborn who was stabbed 15 times, wrapped in towel then left in outhouse”. A picture of the 20-year-old suspect is almost as large as the entirety of the text of the story.
Similarly, a front-page photo – “Revealed: Married doctor who was Letby’s ‘boyfriend’” – takes a grim turn, as the story discloses the only reason his name and photo can be reported is that he’s dead, ending a lifelong anonymity order.
Friday September 4
The Mail reports the death of the feminist icon Gloria Steinem on its front page, recalling her as a “glamorous” titan, who “famously went undercover as Playboy bunny girl” – surely the achievement Steinem would most wish to be recalled first.
Determined never to be consistent in what it asks for, or to consider the consequences of any policy decision, today’s front-page splash is “MET CHIEF STUNNED BY RELEASE OF SERIAL CRIMINALS” – reporting on evidence from Met Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley that because prison places are in short supply, violent offenders are often being granted bail.
This is, of course, the exact situation Andy Burnham has authorised the early release of prisoners to avoid, which the Mail has opposed at every turn. So the newspaper wants Burnham not to release prisoners, but also not to bail new offenders. How dare he not have built new prisons? He’s had six weeks, after all. Day one of Reform’s party conference, meanwhile, merits two pages of coverage inside the paper, but nothing on the front.
Sydney Sweeney is deemed to be so photogenic that she’s pictured on page one and page three, having made herself newsworthy by wearing a dress and riding on a gondola. Our lurid crime story is “Teacher ‘seduced boy of 16 as she was watching Wimbledon with him in her home’,” inevitably accompanied by a mirror selfie of said teacher.
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Saturday September 5
Has it been a week yet? Is it over? I want it to be over. Page one today features the exact same photo of Brigitte Macron’s daughter and her boyfriend, justified this time because the Mail has the “WORLD EXCLUSIVE” interview with him, which gets a full double-page spread inside. You’ll be shocked to hear that he thinks “age means nothing when you’re in love”.
That’s next to a story warning “ARGENTINA CAN ‘SMELL BURNHAM’S WEAKNESS’”, representing the third time this week the paper has just splashed Kemi Badenoch’s comments on Burnham on to its front page – when people say the Conservatives play politics on easy mode, they aren’t kidding, are they?
Once again, Reform is given two pages of coverage for their party conference, but the huge undercover sting revealed by Channel 4 earlier in the week barely gets a mention – with Farage’s promises of “billions of tax cuts” being given the lead instead. Is the Mail hedging its bets on Reform?
Intrepid readers are treated to a picture of Brooklyn Beckham touching his wife’s arse on page three, apparently to mark her being honoured as a “rising star” at the Venice Film Festival, while anyone who had been worried they hadn’t heard enough about the hot tub deaths can be reassured: a double-page spread is given over to the story, with the Mail having decided “questions are mounting” over the couple’s deaths.
Today manages perhaps the most gratuitous excuse to run a large picture of a woman in a glamorous dress, with the “Platell’s People” column leading on an image of “stunningly curvaceous” Maya Jama, because she has “a couple of cameo roles” in Guy Ritchie’s new Netflix series. “Given her eye-wateringly barely-there appearance at the premiere, it could have been called Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Bazookas,” the copy next to the photo purrs.
As I get to page 33, though, I realise this newspaper is definitely not even trying to appeal to millennials, even as we start to hit our 40s. “The last ever series of 7Up has become a lament for a lost Britain…” its headline begins, “and a generation who only asked for a hand-up not a handout”.
Baby boomers, of course, were the first generation to benefit from free universal healthcare in the form of the NHS, and still got free university education with maintenance grants, instead of loans. In their peak earning years in the 1980s and 1990s, they voted for tax-cutting governments, before bringing Labour back. They benefited more than any other generation from the housing boom, and now have the triple lock on the pension. But sure, they “only asked for a hand-up”. Fine. Whatever.
Sunday September 6
It is my seventh, final day as a Mail reader, and I’m honestly not sure who’s more confused: me or them. The paper’s splash story reveals “62,000 ARRESTED IN ‘CHILLING CURB ON FREE SPEECH’”, a figure later revealed to cover five years, and for which around 44,000 of those arrested were released without charge – meaning about 86 people a week were charged or convicted.
Maybe that’s still high, but the implication of the story is that online spaces are over-policed and authorities should back off and let free speech reign. But the story immediately above the splash is an “EXCLUSIVE” on “Nadine’s fury as she’s snared in deepfake porn scandal rocking Westminster”.
Whatever you think of Nadine Dorries’s politics, her fury on this is surely legitimate: no one should have to see themselves demeaned in this way… by under-regulated technology deployed on under-moderated social networks. So, does the Mail think we need more policing of social media, or less?
Reading the paper for the week, it’s relentlessly angry and relentlessly showing you crimes to be afraid of. But nothing is ever explained, no decision is ever considered, and everything is outrageous. No wonder its readers are tired and angry: the paper isn’t even trying to make sense or be consistent on anything beyond a few basic axioms.
Labour is bad, the Conservatives are good, and we’re not sure about Reform. Crime is terrifying, but we want every gruesome detail about it. Hot tubs are a menace. And, wherever possible, we want a nice photo of a lady in a dress, please. That’s just the Daily Mail way.
