Mail chief says Brexit was bad for publicity

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The Mail's chief revenue officer says Brexit is bad for advertising, even though the brand has been one of the most vocal supporters of the Brexit exit EU.

Dominic Williams, senior executive at Mail Metro Media, which also includes The Mail on Sunday and Metro newspapers, said leaving the EU was "certainly having an effect on ad spend, because of the UK economy".

"At the moment it's tough there," he told Reuters. "Really tough."

Admitting his conclusion was ironic given the Mail's stance, he added: "We've been through quite a tough time globally. In the UK we've had Brexit, then we had the pandemic, then we had Ukraine and the cost of living.

"I mean, there's four big things there. And that has affected advertising budgets. Not just us, everyone."

According to the University of Oxford and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism conducted ahead of the 2016 Brexit referendum, the Daily Mail published the most pro-Leave articles before any UK media vote.

The Daily Mail articles, then edited by Paul Dacre , were more focused on migration than the economy, the researchers said.

Brexit, which came into force on January 31, 2020, had a negative impact not only on the economy, but on Mail Metro Media in particular, Mr Williams said.

A Mail front page attacking a High Court ruling on Brexit received more than 1,000 official complaints, the body said watchdog from the IPSO newspaper.

He used the headline 'Enemies of the People' to report on how three judges decided that parliament needed to be consulted before the government could begin the formal process of withdrawal from the EU.

Criticism of the EU has continued since the Mail and Mail on Sunday, with stories such as 'It's foolish for Europe to blame all our supply problems on Brexit' and 'Catastrophic Remoanists were wrong to blame economic problems on Brexit, report says'.

Last month, Mail Online published a comment by Andrew Neil titled "Brexit could still transform Britain, but neither Rishi Sunak nor Keir Starmer are...