ANKARA
British newspapers have set out their views to their readerships on who they believe deserves to win the U.K.'s general election on Thursday.
The Sun
The U.K.’s most widely read newspaper, the right-wing Sun newspaper, backed the center-right Conservative Party.
Its editorial warned that the center-left main opposition Labour party was “committed to a doomed experiment with socialist lunacy”.
“The Tories (Conservatives) took this broken economy and turned it into the envy of the Western world,” the Sun said.
It warned that a vote for the insurgent anti-immigrant, anti-EU UKIP party “brings a Labour/SNP nightmare closer by eroding Tory chances”, referring to the left-wing separatist Scottish National Party ,which is on course to become the third-largest party and deprive Labour of an outright majority.
The popularity of the SNP has risen exponentially in Labour’s Scottish heartland following the "no" vote in the independence referendum held on Sept. 18 last year.
The paper’s Scottish edition, however, went in the opposite direction and called on its readers to vote for the SNP.
Seeing how the Sun’s English edition plastered “Stop SNP running the country” on its front page the very same day, the sharp contrast in voting preferences caused a stir.
“Only in a reshaped, re-energised U.K. can we truly achieve our potential. Only the SNP are willing to fight for such a radical overhaul,” the paper said.
The Guardian
Britain’s liberal-left Guardian newspaper announced its support for Labour.
It criticized the Conservatives, saying: "The economic recovery is only fragile, while social cohesion is threatened by the unequal impact of the financial crisis and the continuing attempt to shrink the post-war state.
“While most Tories shrug at that yawning gap between rich and poor, Labour will at least strive to slow and even reverse the three-decade march towards an obscenely unequal society."
“It is Labour that speaks with more urgency than its rivals on social justice,” it said.
The Daily Telegraph
“We would encourage our readers to vote Conservative and let (Conservative Prime Minister David) Cameron get on with the job,” the center-right Daily Telegraph told its readers.
It praised UKIP for putting immigration and the EU on the agenda, but warned that it was a wasted vote which would split the Right.
Labour leader Ed Miliband “wrongly believes that this means taxing success and aspiration and regulating the free market to the point that it is hardly free at all”, it claimed.
It praised the Conservatives’ economic policies, saying: “Britain generated more jobs in the last four years than were created in the whole of Europe. Its economy is bigger than France’s.”
- The Financial Times
In a typically economy-focused editorial, the Financial Times called for the continuation of the ruling Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition.
“The Conservatives’ economic record ought to provide a winning hand. The mix of a loose monetary policy and a tight fiscal policy has worked,” it said, adding that the U.K. was “in far better shape than in 2010” when the coalition took power.
It praised the Conservatives for shrinking the state, but condemned Cameron’s promise to hold an in-out EU referendum by 2017, a move it said “threatens to consume the first two years of a Tory government”.
Miliband’s refusal to pledge a referendum on Britain’s continued membership of the EU “deserves credit” but his “fundamental weakness” was his preoccupation with inequality and increasing taxes.
“Miliband has not offered a credible economic prospectus and would apply a brake on enterprise," it said.
Saying the centrist Liberal Democrats had “proved a responsible partner in government” the Financial Times added: “In seats where the Lib Dems are the incumbent or the main challenger, we would vote tactically for them.”
