Did Cameron try to get the Mail editor sacked?

What happened?

David Cameron had tried to get pro-Brexit editor, Paul Dacre the sack in the run up to last year’s EU Referendum, this is according to a report by the BBC’s Newsnight programme.

A source told the programme that Lord Rothermere, whose family owns the paper, told Dacre that the then prime minister had suggested he should get the sack.

A spokesman for Cameron said he “did not believe he could determine who edits the Daily Mail”.

The Daily Mail was one of the vociferous voices for Britain to leave the EU in the lead up to the referendum in June last year.

According to the Newsnight programme, Cameron and Dacre met at Downing Street on 2 February 2016, the source told the programme that Cameron asked Dacre to “cut him some slack”, it was rebuffed.

A spokesman for Rothermere refused to confirm or deny the story: “Over the years, Lord Rothermere has been leant on by more than one prime minister to remove Associated Newspapers’ editors but, as he told Lord Justice Leveson on oath, he does not interfere with the editorial policies of his papers.”

A spokesman for Cameron said: “It is wrong to suggest that David Cameron believed he could determine who edits the Daily Mail.”

“It is a matter of public record that he made the case that it was wrong for newspapers to argue that we give up our membership of the EU.”

“He made this argument privately to the editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre, and its proprietor, Lord Rothermere.”