National daily newspapers The sales of national daily papers in the UK reached a peak in the mid-1950s. Since then there has been a gradual decline in sales. The availability of multimedia news platforms has accelerated this decline in the 21st century, and by the close of 2014, no UK newspaper had daily sales exceeding two million. Despite this decline, there is no denying the enormous power the national newspapers still have to influence public opinion. No papers have done this on a bigger scale than Rupert Murdoch’s Sun and the Mail under Paul Dacre. And no issue has ever demonstrated it more clearly than the divisive issue of Brexit. Dacre became editor at the Mail in 1992 and resigned in 2018 (Figure 1 relates to his time in charge). Before and during the 2016 referendum – on leaving or remaining in the European Union – the Mail openly backed the Leave campaign, along with the Express, Star, Sun, and Telegraph. The combined daily sales of these brands was over 4 million, dwarfing those of the four Remain-supporting papers. No surprise, therefore, that the majority of the UK population was persuaded to vote Leave.