Daily Mail

The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper and news websitePeter Wilb
"Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain"
, ''New Statesman'', 19 December 2013 (online version: 2 January 2014) published in London. Founded in 1896, it is the United Kingdom's highest-circulated daily newspaper. Its sister paper ''The Mail on Sunday'' was launched in 1982, while Scottish and Irish editions of the daily paper were launched in 1947 and 2006 respectively. Content from the paper appears on the MailOnline website, although the website is managed separately and has its own editor.

The paper is owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere, a great-grandson of one of the original co-founders, is the current chairman and controlling shareholder of the Daily Mail and General Trust, while day-to-day editorial decisions for the newspaper are usually made by a team led by the editor, Ted Verity, who succeeded Geordie Greig on 17 November 2021.

A survey in 2014 found the average age of its readers was 58, and it had the lowest demographic for 15- to 44-year-olds among the major British dailies. Uniquely for a British daily newspaper, it has a majority female readership, with women making up 52–55% of its readers. It had an average daily circulation of 1,134,184 copies in February 2020. Between April 2019 and March 2020 it had an average daily readership of approximately 2.180 million, of whom approximately 1.407 million were in the ABC1 demographic and .773 million in the C2DE demographic. Its website has more than 218 million unique visitors per month.

The ''Daily Mail'' has won several awards, including receiving the ''National Newspaper of the Year'' award from The Press Awards eight times since 1995, winning again in 2019. The Society of Editors selected it as the 'Daily Newspaper of the Year' for 2020. The ''Daily Mail'' has also been criticised for its unreliability, its printing of sensationalist and inaccurate scare stories of science and medical research, and for instances of plagiarism and copyright infringement. In February 2017, editors on the English Wikipedia banned the use of the ''Daily Mail'' as a source.

Overview

The ''Mail'' was originally a broadsheet but switched to a compact format on 3 May 1971, the 75th anniversary of its founding. On this date it also absorbed the '' Daily Sketch'', which had been published as a tabloid by the same company. The publisher of the ''Mail'', the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), is listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Circulation figures according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations in February 2020 show gross daily sales of 1,134,184 for the ''Daily Mail''. According to a December 2004 survey, 53% of ''Daily Mail'' readers voted for the Conservative Party, compared to 21% for Labour and 17% for the Liberal Democrats. The main concern of Viscount Rothermere, the current chairman and main shareholder, is that the circulation be maintained. He testified before a House of Lords select committee that "we need to allow editors the freedom to edit", and therefore the newspaper's editor was free to decide editorial policy, including its political allegiance. On 17 November 2021, Ted Verity began a new seven-day role as editor of ''Mail'' newspapers, with responsibility for the ''Daily Mail'', ''The Mail on Sunday'' and ''You'' magazine.

History

Early history

The ''Daily Mail'', devised by Alfred Harmsworth (later Viscount Northcliffe) and his brother Harold (later Viscount Rothermere), was first published on 4 May 1896. It was an immediate success. It cost a halfpenny at a time when other London dailies cost one penny, and was more populist in tone and more concise in its coverage than its rivals. The planned issue was 100,000 copies, but the print run on the first day was 397,215, and additional printing facilities had to be acquired to sustain a circulation that rose to 500,000 in 1899. Lord Salisbury, 19th-century Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, dismissed the ''Daily Mail'' as "a newspaper produced by office boys for office boys." By 1902, at the end of the Boer Wars, the circulation was over a million, making it the largest in the world.

With Harold running the business side of the operation and Alfred as editor, the ''Mail'' from the start adopted an imperialist political stance, taking a patriotic line in the Second Boer War, leading to claims that it was not reporting the issues of the day objectively.Gardiner, The Times, The Atlantic Monthly, January 1917 page 113 The ''Mail'' also set out to entertain its readers with human interest stories, serials, features and competitions. It was the first newspaper to recognize the potential market of the female reader with a women's interest section and hired one of the first female war correspondents Sarah Wilson who reported during the Second Boer War.

In 1900 the ''Daily Mail'' began printing simultaneously in both Manchester and London, the first national newspaper to do so (in 1899, the ''Daily Mail'' had organised special trains to bring the London-printed papers north). The same production method was adopted in 1909 by the '' Daily Sketch'', in 1927 by the '' Daily Express'' and eventually by virtually all the other national newspapers. Printing of the ''Scottish Daily Mail'' was switched from Edinburgh to the Deansgate plant in Manchester in 1968 and, for a while, ''The People'' was also printed on the ''Mail'' presses in Deansgate. In 1987, printing at Deansgate ended, and the northern editions were thereafter printed at other Associated Newspapers plants.

For a time in the early 20th century, the paper championed vigorously against the "Yellow Peril", warning of the alleged dangers said to be posted by Chinese immigration to the United Kingdom. The "Yellow Peril" theme came to be abandoned because the Anglo-German naval race led to a more plausible threat to the British empire to be presented. In common with other Conservative papers, the ''Daily Mail'' used the Anglo-German naval race as a way of criticising the Liberal governments that were in power from 1906 onward, claiming that the Liberals were too pusillanimous in their response to the Tirpitz plan.

In 1906 the paper offered £10,000 for the first flight from London to Manchester, followed by a £1,000 prize for the first flight across the English Channel. ''Punch'' magazine thought the idea preposterous and offered £10,000 for the first flight to Mars, but by 1910 both the ''Mail''s prizes had been won. The paper continued to award prizes for aviation sporadically until 1930. Virginia Woolf criticised the ''Daily Mail'' as an unreliable newspaper, citing the statement published in the ''Daily Mail'' in July 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion that "every one of the Europeans was put to the sword in a most atrocious manner" as the ''Daily Mail'' maintained that the entire European community in Beijing had been massacred. A month later in August 1900 the ''Daily Mail'' published a story about the relief of the western Legations in Beijing, where the westerners in Beijing together with the thousands of Chinese Christians had been under siege by the Boxers.

Before the outbreak of the First World War, the paper was accused of warmongering when it reported that Germany was planning to crush the British Empire. When war began, Northcliffe's call for conscription was seen by some as controversial, although he was vindicated when conscription was introduced in 1916.''The New York Times'' Current History 1917, New York Times Company, 1917 p. 211 On 21 May 1915, Northcliffe criticised Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, regarding weapons and munitions. Kitchener was considered by some to be a national hero. The paper's circulation dropped from 1,386,000 to 238,000. Fifteen hundred members of the London Stock Exchange burned unsold copies and called for a boycott of the Harmsworth Press. Prime Minister H. H. Asquith accused the paper of being disloyal to the country.

When Kitchener died, the ''Mail'' reported it as a great stroke of luck for the British Empire. The paper was critical of Asquith's conduct of the war, and he resigned on 5 December 1916. His successor David Lloyd George asked Northcliffe to be in his cabinet, hoping it would prevent him from criticising the government. Northcliffe declined.

According to Piers Brendon:
:Northcliffe's methods made the ''Mail'' the most successful newspaper hitherto seen in the history of journalism. But by confusing gewgaws with pearls, by selecting the paltry at the expense of the significant, by confirming atavistic prejudices, by oversimplifying the complex, by dramatizing the humdrum, by presenting stories as entertainment and by blurring the difference between news and views, Northcliffe titillated, if he did not debouch, the public mind; he polluted, if he did not poison, the wells of knowledge.

Inter-war period

1919 to 1930

Light-hearted stunts enlivened Northcliffe, such as the 'Hat campaign' in the winter of 1920. This was a contest with a prize of £100 for a new design of hat – a subject in which Northcliffe took a particular interest. There were 40,000 entries and the winner was a cross between a top hat and a bowler christened the ''Daily Mail Sandringham Hat''. The paper subsequently promoted the wearing of it but without much success.

In 1919, Alcock and Brown made the first flight across the Atlantic, winning a prize of £10,000 from the ''Daily Mail''. In 1930 the ''Mail'' made a great story of another aviation stunt, awarding another prize of £10,000 to Amy Johnson for making the first solo flight from England to Australia.

The ''Daily Mail'' had begun the Ideal Home Exhibition in 1908. At first, Northcliffe had disdained this as a publicity stunt to sell advertising and he refused to attend. But his wife exerted pressure upon him and he changed his view, becoming more supportive. By 1922 the editorial side of the paper was fully engaged in promoting the benefits of modern appliances and technology to free its female readers from the drudgery of housework. The ''Mail'' maintained the event until selling it to Media 10 in 2009. As Lord Northcliffe aged, his grip on the paper slackened and there were periods when he was not involved. His physical and mental health declined rapidly in 1921, and he died in August 1922 at age 57. His brother Lord Rothermere took full control of the paper.

In the Chanak Crisis of 1922, Britain almost went to war with Turkey. The Prime Minister David Lloyd George, supported by the War Secretary Winston Churchill, were determined to go to war over the Turkish demand that the British leave their occupation zone with Churchill sending out telegrams asking for Canada, Australia and New Zealand to all send troops for the expected war. George Ward Price, the "extra-special correspondent" of ''The Daily Mail'' was sympathetic towards the beleaguered British garrison at Chanak, but was also sympathetic towards the Turks. Ward Price wrote in his articles that Mustafa Kemal did not have wider ambitions to restore the lost frontiers of the Ottoman empire and only wanted the Allies to leave Asia Minor. The ''Daily Mail'' ran a huge banner headline on 21 September 1922 that stated "Get Out Of Chanak!" In a leader (editorial), the ''Daily Mail'' wrote that the views of Churchill-who very much favored going to war with Turkey-were "bordering on insanity". The same leader noted that Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King of Canada had rejected Churchill's request for troops, which led the leader to warn that Churchill's efforts to call upon the Dominions for help for the expected war were endangering the unity of the British empire. Britain was governed by a Liberal-Conservative coalition, and the opposition of the ''Daily Mail'', which normally supported the Conservatives, caused many Tories to reconsider continuing the coalition government of Lloyd George. The Chanek crisis ended with the Conservatives pulling out of the coalition, causing Lloyd George's downfall and with Britain backing down as the British agreed to pull their troops out of Turkey.

Rothermere had a fundamentally elitist conception of politics, believing that the natural leaders of Britain were upper class men like himself, and he strongly disapproved of the decision to grant women the right to vote together with the end of the franchise requirements that disfranchised lower-class men. Feeling that British women and lower-class men were not really capable of understanding the issues, Rothermere started to lose faith in democracy. In October 1922, the ''Daily Mail'' approved of the Fascist "March on Rome" as the newspaper argued that democracy had failed in Italy, thus requiring Benito Mussolini to set up his Fascist dictatorship to save the social order. In 1923, Rothermere published a leader in ''The Daily Mail'' entitled "What Europe Owes Mussolini", where he wrote about his "profound admiration" for Mussolini, whom he praised for "in saving Italy he stopped the inroads of Bolshevism which would had left Europe in ruins...in my judgment he saved the entire Western world. It was because Mussolini overthrew Bolshevism in Italy that it collapsed in Hungary and ceased to gain adherents in Bavaria and Prussia". In 1923, the newspaper supported the Italian occupation of Corfu and condemned the British government for at least rhetorically opposing the Italian attack on Greece.

On 25 October 1924, the ''Daily Mail'' published the Zinoviev letter, which indicated Moscow was directing British Communists toward violent revolution. It was later proven to be a hoax. At the time many on the left blamed the letter for the defeat of Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Party in the 1924 general election, held four days later.

Unlike most newspapers, the ''Mail'' quickly took up an interest on the new medium of radio. In 1928, the newspaper established an early example of an offshore radio station aboard a yacht, both as a means of self-promotion and as a way to break the BBC's monopoly. However, the project failed as the equipment was not able to provide a decent signal from overboard, and the transmitter was replaced by a set of speakers. The yacht spent the summer entertaining beach-goers with gramophone records interspersed with publicity for the newspaper and its insurance fund. The ''Mail'' was also a frequent sponsor on continental commercial radio stations targeted towards Britain throughout the 1920s and 1930s and periodically voiced support for the legalisation of private radio, something that would not happen until 1973.

From 1923 Lord Rothermere and the ''Daily Mail'' formed an alliance with the other great press baron, Lord Beaverbrook. Their opponent was the Conservative Party politician and leader Stanley Baldwin. Rothermere in a leader conceded that Fascist methods were "not suited to a country like our own", but qualified his remark with the statement, "if our northern cities became Bolshevik we would need them". In an article in 1927 celebrating five years of Fascism in Italy, it was argued that there were parallels between modern Britain and Italy in the last years of the Liberal era as it was argued Italy had a series of weak liberal and conservative governments that made concessions to the Italian Socialist Party such as granting universal male suffrage in 1912 whose "only result was to hasten the arrival of disorder". In the same article, Baldwin was compared to the Italian prime ministers of the Liberal era as the article argued that the General Strike of 1926 should never have been allowed to occur and the Baldwin government was condemned "for the feebleness which it tries to placate opposition by being more Socialist than the Socialists". In 1928, the ''Daily Mail'' in a leader praised Mussolini as "the great figure of the age. Mussolini will probably dominate the history of the twentieth century as Napoleon dominated the early nineteen century".

By 1929 George Ward Price was writing in the ''Mail'' that Baldwin should be deposed and Beaverbrook elected as leader. In early 1930 the two Lords launched the United Empire Party, which the ''Daily Mail'' supported enthusiastically. Like Lord Beaverbrook, Rothemere was outraged by Baldwin's centre-right style of Conservatism and his decision to respond to almost universal suffrage by expanding the appeal of the Conservative Party. Far from seeing giving women the right to vote as the disaster Rothermere believed that it was, Baldwin set out to appeal to female voters, a tactic that was politically successful, but led Rothermere to accuse Baldwing of "feminising" the Conservative Party.

The rise of the new party dominated the newspaper, and, even though Beaverbrook soon withdrew, Rothermere continued to campaign. Vice Admiral Ernest Augustus Taylor fought the first by-election for the United Empire Party in October, defeating the official Conservative candidate by 941 votes. Baldwin's position was now in doubt, but in 1931 Duff Cooper won the key by-election at St George's, Westminster, beating the United Empire Party candidate, Sir Ernest Petter, supported by Rothermere, and this broke the political power of the press barons.

In 1927, the celebrated picture of the year ''Morning'' by Dod Procter was bought by the ''Daily Mail'' for the Tate Gallery.

In 1927, Rothermere, under the influence of his Hungarian mistress, Countess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, took up the cause of Hungary as his own, publishing a leader on 21 June 1927 entitled "Hungary's Place in the Sun". In "Hungary's Place in the Sun", he approvingly noted that Hungary was dominated both politically and economically by its "chivalrous and warlike aristocracy", whom he noted in past centuries had battled the Ottoman Empire, leading him to conclude that all of Europe owned a profound debt to the Hungarian aristocracy which had been "Europe's bastion against which the forces of Mahomet he Prophet Mohammedvainly hurled themselves against". Rothemere argued that it was unjust that the "noble" Hungarians should be under the rule of "cruder and more barbaric races", by which he meant the peoples of Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. In his leader, he advocated that Hungary retake all of the lands lost under the Treaty of Trianon, which caused immediate concern in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Romania, where it was believed that his leader reflected British government policy. Additionally, he took up the cause of the Sudeten Germans, stating that the Sudetenland should go to Germany. The Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Edvard Beneš was so concerned that he visited London to meet King George V, a man who detested Rothermere and used language that was so crude, vulgar and "unkingy" that Beneš had to report to Prague that he could not possibly repeat the king's remarks. In fact, Rothermere's "Justice for Hungary" campaign, which he continued until February 1939, was a source of disquiet for the Foreign Office, which complained that British relations with Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania were constantly stained as the leaders of those nations continued to harbor the belief that Rothermere was in some way speaking for the British government.

One of the major themes of ''The Daily Mail'' was the opposition to the Indian independence movement and much of Rothermere's opposition to Baldwin was based upon the belief that Baldwin was not sufficiently opposed to Indian independence. In 1930, Rothermere wrote a series of leaders under the title "If We Lose India!", claiming that granting India independence would be the end of Britain as a great power. In addition, Rothermere predicted that Indian independence would end worldwide white supremacy as inevitably, the peoples of the other British colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Americas would also demand independence. The decision of the Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald to open the Round Table Conferences in 1930 was greeted by ''The Daily Mail'' as the beginning of the end of Britain as a great power. As part of its crusade against Indian independence, ''The Daily Mail'' published a series of articles portraying the peoples of India as ignorant, barbarous, filthy and fanatical, arguing that the Raj was necessary to save India from the Indians, whom ''The Daily Mail'' argued were not capable of handling independence.

Support of fascism: 1930–1934

Lord Rothermere was a friend of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, and directed the Mail's editorial stance towards them in the early 1930s. Lord Rothermere took an extreme anti-Communist line, which led him to own an estate in Hungary to which he might escape to in case Britain was conquered by the Soviet Union. Shortly after the Nazis scored their breakthrough in the Reichstag elections on 14 September 1930, winning 107 seats, Rothermere went to Munich to interview Hitler. In an article published in ''Daily Mail'' on 24 September 1930, Rothemere wrote: "These young Germans have discovered, as I am glad to note that the young men and women of England are discovering, that is no good trusting the old politicians. Accordingly, they have formed, as I should like to see our British youth form, a parliamentary party of their own...We can do nothing to check this movement he Nazis and I believe it would be a blunder for the British people to take up an attitude of hostility towards it". Starting in December 1931, Rothermere opened up talks with Oswald Mosley under which terms the ''Daily Mail'' would support his party. The talks were drawn out largely because Mosley understood that Rothermere was a megalomaniac who wanted to use the New Party for his own purposes as he sought to impose terms and conditions in exchange for the support of the ''Daily Mail''. Mosley, who was equally egoistical, wanted Rothermere's support, but only on his own terms.

Rothermere's 1933 leader "Youth Triumphant" praised the new Nazi regime's accomplishments, and was subsequently used as propaganda by them. In it, Rothermere predicted that "The minor misdeeds of individual Nazis would be submerged by the immense benefits the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany". Journalist John Simpson, in a book on journalism, suggested that Rothermere was referring to the violence against Jews and Communists rather than the detention of political prisoners. Alongside his support for Nazi Germany as the "bulwark against Bolshevism", Rothermere used ''The Daily Mail'' as a forum to champion his pet cause, namely a stronger Royal Air Force (RAF). Rothermere had decided that aerial war was the technology of the future, and throughout the 1930s ''The Daily Mail'' was described as "obsessional" in pressing for more spending on the RAF.

Rothermere and the ''Mail'' were also editorially sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. Rothermere wrote an article titled "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" published in the ''Daily Mail'' on 15 January 1934, praising Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine", and pointing out that: "Young men may join the British Union of Fascists by writing to the Headquarters, King's Road, Chelsea, London, S.W." ''The Spectator'' condemned Rothermere's article commenting that, "... the Blackshirts, like the ''Daily Mail'', appeal to people unaccustomed to thinking. The average ''Daily Mail'' reader is a potential Blackshirt ready made. When Lord Rothermere tells his clientele to go and join the Fascists some of them pretty certainly will." In April 1934, the ''Daily Mail'' ran a competition entitled "Why I Like The Blackshirts" under which it awarded one pound every week for the best letter from its readers explaining why they liked the BUF. The paper's support ended after violence at a BUF rally in Kensington Olympia in June 1934. Mosley and many others thought Rothermere had responded to pressure from Jewish businessmen who it was believed had threatened to stop advertising in the paper if it continued to back an anti-Semitic party. The paper editorially continued to oppose the arrival of Jewish refugees escaping Germany, describing their arrival as "a problem to which the ''Daily Mail'' has repeatedly pointed."

In December 1934, Rothermere visited Berlin as the guest of Joachim von Ribbentrop. During his visit, Rothermere was publicly thanked in a speech by Josef Goebbels for the ''Daily Mail''s pro-German coverage of the Saarland referendum, under which the people of the Saarland had the choices of voting to remain under the rule of the League of Nations, join France, or rejoin Germany. In March 1935, impressed by the arguments put forward by Ribbentrop for the return of the former German colonies in Africa, Rothermere published a leader entitled "Germany Must Have Elbow Room". In his leader, Rothermere argued that the Treaty of Versailles was too harsh towards the ''Reich'' and claimed that the German economy was being crippled by the loss of the German colonial empire in Africa as he argued that without African colonies to exploit that the German economic recovery from the Great Depression was fragile and shallow.

During the Spanish Civil War, the ''Daily Mail'' ran a photo-essay on 27 July 1936 by Ferdinand Touchy entitled "The Red Carmens, the women who burn churches". Touchy took a series of photographs of Spanish women who joined the Worker's Militia marching up to the front with rifles and ammunition poaches over their shoulders. In an essay that has been widely criticised as misogynistic, Touchy wrote: "The Spanish women has been a creature to admire or make work domestically, to marry or let slip away into a religious order...65 percent were illiterate". Touchy declared his horror at the young Spanish women had rejected the traditional patriarchal system, writing with disgust that the "direct action girls" of the Worker's Militia do not want to be like their mothers, submissive and obedient to men. Touchy called these young women "Red Carmens", associating them with the destructive heroine of the opera '' Carmen'' and with Communism, writing the "Red Carmens" proved the amorality of the Spanish Republic, which had preached gender equality. For Touchy, women to fight in a war was to reject their femininity, leading him to label these women as monstrous as he accused the "Red Carmens" of "sexual depravity", writing with utter horror at the possibility of these women engaging in premarital sex, which for him marked the beginning of the end of "civilisation" itself. The British historian Caroline Brothers wrote that Touchy's article said much about the gender politics of ''The Daily Mail'', which ran his photo-essay and presumably of ''The Daily Mails readers who were expected to approve of the article.

In a 1937 article, George Ward Price, the special correspondent of ''The Daily Mail'', approvingly wrote: "The sense of national unity-the '' Volkgemeinschaft''-to which the ''Führer'' constantly appeals in his speeches is not a rhetorical invention, but a reality". Ward Price was one of the most controversial British journalists of the 1930s, who was one of the few British journalists allowed to interview both Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler because both fascist leaders knew that Ward Price could be trusted to take a favorable tone and ask "soft" questions. Wickham Steed called Ward Price "the lackey of Mussolini, Hitler and Rothermere". The British historian Daniel Stone called Ward Price's reporting from Berlin and Rome "a mixture of snobbery, name dropping and obsequious pro-fascism of a most genteel 'English' type". In the 1938 crisis over the Sudetenland, ''The Daily Mail'' was very hostile in its picture of President Edvard Beneš, whom Rothermere noted disapprovingly in a leader in July 1938 had signed an alliance with the Soviet Union in 1935, leading him to accuse Beneš of turning "Czechoslovakia into a corridor for Russia against Germany". Rothermere concluded his leader: "If Czechoslovakia becomes involved in a war, the British nation will say to the Prime Minister with one voice: 'Keep out of it!'"

During the Danzig crisis, the ''Daily Mail'' was inadvertently used by the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to persuade Hitler that Britain would not go to war for the defense of Poland. Ribbentrop had the German Embassy in London headed by Herbert von Dirksen provide translations from pro-appeasement newspapers like the ''Daily Mail'' and the ''Daily Express'' for Hitler's benefit, which had the effect of making it seem that British public opinion was more strongly against going to war for Poland than was actually the case. The British historian Victor Rothwell wrote that the newspapers that Ribbentrop used to provide his press summaries for Hitler such as the ''Daily Express'' and the ''Daily Mail'', were out of touch not only with British public opinion, but also with British government policy in regards to the Danzig crisis. The press summaries Ribbentrop provided were particularly important as Ribbentrop had managed to convince Hitler that the British government secretly controlled the British press, and just as in Germany, nothing appeared in the British press that the British government did not want to appear.

Post-war history

On 5 May 1946, the ''Daily Mail'' celebrated its Golden Jubilee. Winston Churchill was the chief guest at the banquet and toasted it with a speech. Newsprint rationing in the Second World War had forced the ''Daily Mail'' to cut its size to four pages, but the size gradually increased through the 1950s. In 1947, when the Raj ended, the ''Daily Mail'' featured a banner headline reading "India: 11 words mark the end of an empire". During the Suez crisis of 1956, the ''Daily Mail'' consistently took a hardline against President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, taking the viewpoint that Britain was justified in invading Egypt to retake control of the Suez canal and topple Nasser.

The ''Daily Mail'' was transformed by its editor during the 1970s and 1980s, David English. He had been editor of the '' Daily Sketch'' from 1969 to 1971, when it closed. Part of the same group from 1953, the ''Sketch'' was absorbed by its sister title, and English became editor of the ''Mail'', a post in which he remained for more than 20 years. English transformed it from a struggling newspaper selling half as many copies as its mid-market rival, the '' Daily Express'', to a formidable publication, whose circulation rose to surpass that of the ''Express'' by the mid-1980s. English was knighted in 1982.

The paper enjoyed a period of journalistic success in the 1980s, employing Fleet Street writers such as gossip columnist Nigel Dempster, Lynda Lee-Potter and sportswriter Ian Wooldridge (who unlike some of his colleagues – the paper generally did not support sporting boycotts of white-minority-ruled South Africa – strongly opposed apartheid). In 1982 a Sunday title, the ''Mail on Sunday'', was launched (the Scottish '' Sunday Mail'', now owned by the Mirror Group, was founded in 1919 by the first Lord Rothermere, but later sold).

Knighted in 1982, Sir David English became editor-in-chief and chairman of Associated Newspapers in 1992 after Rupert Murdoch had attempted to hire ''Evening Standard'' editor Paul Dacre as editor of ''The Times''. The ''Evening Standard'' was then part of the Associated Newspapers group, and Dacre was appointed to succeed English at the ''Daily Mail'' as a means of dealing with Murdoch's offer. Dacre retired as editor of the ''Daily Mail'' but remains editor-in-chief of the group.

In late 2013, the paper moved its London printing operation from the city's Docklands area to a new £50 million plant in Thurrock, Essex. There are Scottish editions of both the ''Daily Mail'' and ''Mail on Sunday'', with different articles and columnists.

In August 2016, the ''Daily Mail'' began a partnership with ''The People's Daily'', the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. This partnership included publishing articles in the MailOnline produced by The People's Daily. The agreement appeared to observers to give the paper an edge in publishing news stories sourced out of China, but it also led to questions of censorship regarding politically sensitive topics. In November 2016, Lego ended a series of promotions in the paper which had run for years, following a campaign from the group ' Stop Funding Hate', who were unhappy with the ''Mails coverage of migrant issues and the EU referendum.

In September 2017, the ''Daily Mail'' partnered with Stage 29 Productions to launch DailyMailTV, an international news program produced by Stage 29 Productions in its studios based in New York City with satellite studios in London, Sydney, DC and Los Angeles. Dr. Phil McGraw (Stage 29 Productions) was named as executive producer. The program was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Entertainment News Program in 2018.

In May 2020, the ''Daily Mail'' ended '' The Sun's'' 42-year reign as the United Kingdom's highest-circulation newspaper. The ''Daily Mail'' recorded average daily sales of 980,000 copies, with the ''Mail on Sunday'' recording weekly sales of 878,000.

In August 2022, the ''Daily Mail'' wrote in support of Liz Truss in the July–September 2022 Conservative Party leadership election, calling her chancellor's mini-budget "a true Tory budget" that September.

Scottish, Irish, Continental, and Indian editions

''Scottish Daily Mail''

The ''Scottish Daily Mail'' was published as a separate title from Edinburgh starting in December 1946. The circulation was poor though, falling to below 100,000 and the operation was rebased to Manchester in December 1968. In 1995 the ''Scottish Daily Mail'' was relaunched, and is printed in Glasgow. It had an average circulation of 67,900 in the area of Scotland in December 2019.

''Irish Daily Mail''

The ''Daily Mail'' officially entered the Irish market with the launch of a local version of the paper on 6 February 2006; free copies of the paper were distributed on that day in some locations to publicise the launch. Its masthead differed from that of UK versions by having a green rectangle with the word "IRISH", instead of the Royal Arms, but this was later changed, with "Irish Daily Mail" displayed instead. The Irish version includes stories of Irish interest alongside content from the UK version. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Irish edition had a circulation of 63,511 for July 2007, falling to an average of 49,090 for the second half of 2009. Since 24 September 2006 ''Ireland on Sunday'', the Irish Sunday newspaper acquired by Associated in 2001, was replaced by an Irish edition of the ''Mail on Sunday'' (the ''Irish Mail on Sunday''), to tie in with the weekday newspaper.

''Continental'' and ''Overseas Daily Mail''

Two foreign editions were begun in 1904 and 1905; the former titled the ''Overseas Daily Mail'', covering the world, and the latter titled the ''Continental Daily Mail'', covering Europe and North Africa.

''Mail Today''

The newspaper entered India on 16 November 2007 with the launch of ''Mail Today'', a 48-page compact size newspaper printed in Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida with a print run of 110,000 copies. Based around a subscription model, the newspaper has the same fonts and feel as the ''Daily Mail'' and was set up with investment from Associated Newspapers and editorial assistance from the ''Daily Mail'' newsroom. The paper alternated between supporting the Congress-led UPA regime as well as the BJP-led NDA regime. Between 2010 and 2014, it supported the Kapil Sibal–led reforms to change the undergraduate structure at the University of Delhi. In 2016, it was the first newspaper to break the controversial story about terror slogans being raised in favour of the hanged terrorist Afzal Guru on his death anniversary at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Editorial stance

As a right-wing tabloid, the ''Mail'' is traditionally a supporter of the Conservative Party. It has endorsed the party in every UK general election since 1945, with the one exception of the October 1974 UK general election, where it endorsed a Liberal and Conservative coalition. While the paper retained its support for the Conservative Party at the 2015 general election, the paper urged conservatively inclined voters to support UKIP in the constituencies of Heywood and Middleton, Dudley North, and Great Grimsby where UKIP was the main challenger to the Labour Party.

The paper is generally critical of the BBC
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