Theresa May had a particularly awkward visit to Copeland on Wednesday to support the Tory by-election campaign, where she repeatedly refused to answer a question on cuts to a local hospital.
The tone of her trip was caught perfectly in a couple of snaps taken at Captain Shaw’s CE Primary School in Bootle, Cumbria, where May appeared to react with horror to a child’s lego robot, and then with more horror to another child sitting on the other side of her.
Unflattering pictures are of course a hazard of life as a party leader. Here’s one taken of Ed Miliband eating a bacon sandwich, on the front page of The Sun.
And here’s how The Sun covered it on an inside page:
Strangely though, The Sun - along with every other paper - did not put May’s contorted face on their front page on Thursday. Here it is (if you can spot it) on The Sun’s page eight, illustrating a story criticising a Labour pamphlet:
There’s how the Daily Mail covered Miliband’s sandwich troubles:
And here’s May on page four of Thursday’s Mail, alongside the subhead “...back in the land of the sane...”:
...while the Daily Telegraph, formerly harsh on Miliband’s “latest ham fisted attempt to look normal”, is today fairly reserved about May on page two.
“Theresa May said she was ‘blown away by the children’ at Captain Shaw’s Primary in Bootle, Cumbria, who showed off their Lego robot. However, the Prime Minister’s grimace seemed to tell a different story,” the Telegraph caption read.
The Financial Times did have a picture of the visit on their front page, but it was a rather nice one instead:
During her Copeland visit May was accused of ignoring the NHS, after she refused four times to say if she opposed cuts to a local hospital.
The Tories are fighting to overturn a Labour majority of 2,500 to take the seat for the first time since the 1930s.
But May refused to say she would reverse plans to slash funds to maternity services at the West Cumberland Hospital.
During the awkward interview, May conceded that Trudy Harrison was opposed to the “downgrading of these services”, but would not offer her own opinion.
“What is important is that Trudy Harrison is a candidate who has made clear her views not just to me but to health ministers, but she is also somebody who has a track record of delivering for local people,” she said.