Now the Daily Mail and the Sun are in agreement over the Tory party leadership. The former is eager to see Theresa May walk into No 10 while the latter is certain that Andrea Leadsom should not.

The Daily Telegraph is also hot for May. Pointing to “an unguarded remark” by Ken Clarke about May being a “bloody difficult woman”, the paper regarded that as a plus: “We have had one running the country before; we need another now.”

And the Times agrees. After revealing Leadsom’s wholly inappropriate comment on her motherhood (and May’s non-motherhood) being a factor in the contest, the paper referred to her “lack of judgment, knowledge and decency.”

All four newspapers have been pining for Margaret Thatcher since she was overthrown in 1990. Now they think they have a replacement, a “new Iron Lady” according to the Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh.

Why should the papers’ views be so important? Because, collectively, the four titles are read by the overwhelming majority of the Conservative party’s membership, the people who hold the Tories’ fate in their hands.

Leadsom has therefore discovered just how uncomfortable it is to be a contender for the highest political office. Her Brexit sympathies have counted for nothing despite three of the papers (Mail, Sun, Telegraph) having campaigned for a leave vote in the EU referendum.

They prefer May, a supposedly reluctant remainer, and have thrown their weight behind her while subjecting Leadsom to the kind of intense scrutiny that has put her on the back foot.

Aside from her faux pas over the motherhood matter, relevant questions have been raised about her “embellished” CV and about her apparent flip-flops over European Union membership. Then there is the important issue of her lack of political experience.

All in all, Leadsom should be a dead duck. But the editors of the blue quartet will leave nothing to chance. If Leadsom and her supporters think she can make a comeback from the negative press coverage, they should think again. They haven’t seen anything yet.

Running in parallel will be positive editorial content on May’s behalf. The Mail’s Monday issue was a case in point. Its spread, “May declares war on fat cats”, extolled the home secretary’s initiative while its columnist Jan Moir scorned Leadsom, “Why I deplore smug Andrea’s childless women jibe at Theresa.”

This was topped off with a leading article, “May is on a mission to unite the nation”, which argued that she is “the leadership candidate to restore stability and salve the Tories’ self-inflicted wounds.”

The Telegraph carried an interview with Leadsom by Allison Pearson in which the energy minister pleaded, once again, that she had not meant motherhood to “play a part in the campaign.” She admitted to being “guilty of naivety” (a quality that surely makes her a prime ministerial risk).

Pearson wrote: “I have no doubt whatsoever that Leadsom became the target of a brutal and sustained character assassination.” But she attributed this not to newspapers but quoted Iain Duncan Smith who claimed his favoured candidate to be “the victim of disgusting ‘black ops’ by the Tory establishment” (a claim also carried by the Daily Express on its front page).

In something of an apologia for Leadsom, Pearson showed sympathy for the MP having suffered “a brutally hard week” and having been reduced to tears.

She concluded: “They say more horrible things about her than anyone could reasonably be expected to bear. They say it’s a done deal. I’m not so sure”.

In The Times, David Cameron’s former chief speechwriter, Clare Foges, argued that the events of the past week had “confirmed to many that Leadsom doesn’t have what it takes to hold the highest office.”

But she warned: “Anyone hoping to halt the progress of Leadsom should be wary of piling in too heavily, amplifying the gaffes and exaggerating her into a mortal threat to Britain’s future.”

Why? Because “anti-establishment feeling is the most powerful political tool of our age.”

There, in a sentence, is the reason that Tory-supporting newspapers will go on giving Leadsom a hard time. Predicting how the people of Britain behave in these times, including Tory party members, has never been more difficult.

No-one knows that better than the blue quartet’s editors: Paul Dacre (Mail), Tony Gallagher (Sun), Chris Evans (Telegraph) and John Witherow (Times). They will surely make Leadsom cry all over again before the result is declared on 9 September.