Cameron tried to get editor of pro-Brexit Daily Mail sacked

London: Former British Prime Minister David Cameron attempted to have the editor of a national newspaper that strongly supported Brexit sacked during last year’s European Union (EU) referendum campaign, the BBC has reported.

Mr Cameron, who led the campaign for Britain to stay in the EU, met the owner of the Daily Mail tabloid, the country’s second-biggest selling paper with the largest online audience, to urge him to either rein in or sack its editor Paul Dacre, according to the report by BBC TV’s Newsnight programme.

A spokesman for Mr Cameron told the BBC that he denied the report and had merely sought to persuade them of his pro-EU case.

The Mail, which Mr Dacre has edited for 25 years, has long been a fierce critic of the EU and, like the majority of Britain’s national newspapers, was an outspoken supporter of the campaign to leave the bloc.

Britons voted by 52-48 percent for Brexit on June 23 last year, prompting Mr Cameron to resign the next day.

According to the BBC report, Mr Cameron tried to persuade Mr Dacre to “cut him some slack” in a private meeting last February on the day European Council president Donald Tusk unveiled a deal the bloc had agreed with Britain which Mr Cameron hoped would secure victory in the referendum.

The next day the Mail accused Mr Cameron of “delusion and selling the country short”.

Then in March, the BBC said Mr Dacre learned that the then-PM had tried to press Jonathan Harmsworth, known as Lord Rothermere, to sack him leaving him “incandescent” and vowing to step up his anti-EU campaign. A spokesman for Rothermere declined to confirm or deny the report, but said the Mail’s proprietor had been “leant on by more than one Prime Minister” to remove editors over the years. Mr Dacre also declined to comment.