TRUSSED UP: How the Daily Mail tied itself in knots over the Tory leadership

The Daily Mail is the newspaper Tory MPs respect and fear. But what happens when the
paper loses the plot?

Outraged that Boris Johnson was forced out in July 2022, the Voice of Middle England
pulled out all the stops to make sure the Tories installed Liz Truss as PM. She lasted six weeks before the paper admitted she was a disaster, flirted with the notion of a Johnson comeback, and finally, in a jaw-dropping U-turn, hailed the ‘new dawn’ of Rishi Sunak – the man it had spent all summer denigrating.

Fleet St knockabout? Or are more serious issues at play? In this sharp and witty analysis,
award-winning media commentator and former Times executive Liz Gerard dissects more than 100 news reports and editorials to lay bare the confusion, contortions and contradictions that left the Mail squirming. Shouldn’t the paper at least acknowledge its role in landing us with the Truss
catastrophe?

For students of the interplay between politics, journalism and history, this provocative and disturbing investigation is unmissable.

Liz Gerard worked for 40 years in newspapers, 30 of them at The Times, where she was one of the night editors. She now writes and speaks about print journalism.

She is an ‘embittered Remoaner’ who believes she is neither embittered nor moany – just angry and depressed about Brexit.