The Mail is selling the dream of European life it helped eliminate, to readers trapped in the post-Brexit reality it championed.
The Daily Mail has been at it again, selling readers a dream life abroad – this time to Cyprus.
“British family moved to Cyprus after getting fed up of dreary UK life – and now enjoy life on ONE parent’s salary only,” boasted a recent headline, promoting the story of a couple from Middlesbrough who moved abroad with their two young children.
The article applauds the family’s newfound happiness, freedom from 60-hour workweeks, and the dramatic drop in living costs, from council tax to heating bills.
“They now live on just one salary,” the piece declares, “and ditched their £400-a-month heating and council tax bills.” Within weeks, the family was “instantly happier,” it adds, celebrating the ease of life and affordability in Cyprus.
“They love it so much they can never see a move back to the UK for themselves.”
The same Daily Mail that is now celebrating the virtues of life in Cyprus played a pivotal role in campaigning for Brexit, a decision that removed the automatic right for Britons to live and work in EU countries like Cyprus without lengthy bureaucracy.
During the initial months of the EU referendum campaign following David Cameron’s post-summit Cabinet meeting on 20 February 2016, research shows that of 928 referendum-related articles in UK newspapers, the Mail published more pro-Leave articles than any other paper.
Critics were quick to point out the irony.
“What a shame,” posted Sheffield for Europe. “If that rag had not promoted Brexit, the Moores [family that moved to Cyprus] would have had automatic rights to live and work in Cyprus enjoying their rights of freedom of movement.”
“Escaping the dreary life of post-Brexit UK,” was another response.
Don’t forget, this is the newspaper, which in November 2016, ran a front page that called the supreme court judges Enemies of the People who had “declared war on democracy” prompted 1,600 complaints to the press regulator IPSO, and international condemnation. Not least because the phrase was more typically associated with murderous revolutionary leaders in both Soviet Russia and France, as well as dictatorships ever since.
IPSO ultimately took no action, citing the press’s right to editorialise and campaign.
Now, the Mail is selling the dream of European life it helped eliminate to readers trapped in the post-Brexit reality it championed.
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