Last week the Daily Mail endorsed Theresa May as the next Tory leader. The declaration took many by surprise as not only was it very early in the campaign to come out for a candidate, it had been thought that the paper might opt for Michael Gove — after his wife Sarah Vine suggested Paul Dacre favoured him in a leaked email.
So, why did Dacre snub Gove just a day after he announced his leadership ambitions? While some have taken it to be a sign that the Daily Mail editor was unimpressed by the manner in which the Justice Secretary had turned on Boris Johnson, could any ill-feeling run deeper than that?
In 2004 when Gove was Saturday editor of the Times, he penned an article for The Spectator about Dacre and the Daily Mail. In the article — entitled ‘The deadly Mail’ — Gove takes aim at the paper for becoming ‘a full-throated, anti-war, anti-US, anti-Bush propaganda sheet’:
‘As the war on terror has progressed, we’ve seen a remarkable new coalition form.
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