Donald Trump’s cheerleaders in the UK’s right-wing newspapers delivered a master class in their gung-ho reporting of the surprise attack by US stealth jets to drop bunker-busting bombs on Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.
Daring military operations trying to right the wrongs of the world are an intoxicating brew for the British tabloids whose expertise in delivering bellicose coverage was so admired by then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during the 1982 Falklands War.
“Stick it up your bunker” declared the Sun (23.6.2025) ahead of ten pages of reports on how the US had hit “Iran nukes in Midnight Hammer” attack – a front-page headline straight out of the playbook of the paper’s legendary former editor Kelvin MacKenzie.
“Stick it up your junta” was the 1982 splash over what the Sun deemed were fake peace talks with Argentina before the arrival of the Royal Navy Task Force, followed by MacKenzie’s infamous one-word front page “Gotcha” when “Our lads sink gunboat and hole cruiser”.
Through four decades of conflicts – and most notably the Gulf Wars of 1990 to 1991 and the Iraq War of 2003 – the British tabloid press has gone into overdrive whenever there is any action by Our Boys – and of course by the USA.
Their coverage, invariably supportive whenever the military are taking on known bad guys like the Ayatollahs, celebrates heroic derring-do action harking back to the brave exploits that were once recounted in Boys’ Own Paper.
Trump would have been as delighted as Mrs Thatcher was all those years ago if he had been shown the full extent of the laudatory reportage for “The extraordinary 37-hour bunker busting bombing raid that obliterated Iran’s nuclear sites”. (Daily Mail 23.6.2025).
Readers were offered page after page photographs, maps, diagrams and images of explosions all laid out with the exceptional flair for which the British popular press is renowned.
There were some words of caution on some of the front pages – “Fears UK will now face Iran terror backlash” (Daily Mail) – but once inside the warlike coverage was into its stride.
Columnists and commentators leapt to Trump’s defence praising the way he had built the mission on deception and surprise.
“At last! Mad mullahs get a President that didn’t chicken out” declared the Sun’s editor-at-large Harry Cole.
Not since the heady early days of the Iraq War and the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 had the tabloids gone into overdrive in the way they backed Trump over the stealth jet strikes against Iran.
Unlike the Iraq War there had not been anything like the same initial pushback which George Bush and Tony Blair had faced during tortuous UN negotiations over the coalition’s aim to “disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction”.
However, once the Iraq invasion was underway most of the British press was as unquestioning in its coverage as it had been in support of John Major during the Gulf War.
A template for their gung-ho war reporting had undoubtedly been established during the Falklands War, a heyday for the printed press when the ten national dailies were selling almost 15 million copies of day.
Such was the impact of their coverage -- the Sun was selling over four million copies, down to 630,000 today – that the mood of euphoria created by “Gotcha” headlines virtually obliterated any questioning of Mrs Thatcher’s tactics.
I was a BBC labour and industrial correspondent at the time and knew there were trade union leaders who had grave doubts about the validity of declaring war against Argentina but once the naval Task Force was on its way to the Falklands any doubting voices melted away.
They realised they would be pilloried by newspapers like the Sun and the Daily Mail and kept their heads down.
In the early 1980s there was no rolling television news in the UK or the wild west of today’s social media but the fear of being demonised in the popular press was perhaps as powerful as the trolling of today.
Despite the collapse of newspaper circulations their front pages, especially at times of crisis, regularly make the news, and are released for use by television and radio in good time for late evening news bulletins and discussion programmes.
Only the front-page headlines are made available but their dramatic take on the day’s news provides an important news line for commentators.
They usually appear once again in newspaper reviews on breakfast television, and notwithstanding diminishing sales, are displayed near checkouts in supermarkets and newsagents, hence the attention which is paid to coming up with eye-catching offerings such as “Stick it up your bunker”.
Nicholas Jones 24 6 2025