Britain’s Sun newspaper has issued a ‘final warning’ to Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron following four years of Mr Cameron’s premiership, and continuing inability to curb UK immigration figures.
The Murdoch-owned paper ran the headline, “We’re Seeing Red” with a “Final Warning to PM” over EU immigration, and urged that Cameron “gets his finger out”.
Media commentators have claimed that the move is U-turn on UKIP issues, following Nigel Farage’s party’s huge electoral victories this past week.
But the “we’re seeing red” headline is a clear allusion to the Labour Party, which the Sun famously switched its support to in 1997, before returning to endorse the Conservatives in 2009.
The paper’s editorial today reads: “Five months ago we urged the PM to demand the power to halt EU migrants as his “red line” when it came to negotiating Britain a better deal with Brussels. We warned him that uncontrolled mass immigration is top of many ordinary people’s concerns. That the flood is overwhelming hospitals, schools, transport and housing in some areas. The millions of voters who backed Ukip last week plainly agree. Yet nothing has happened.
“Ed Miliband will not change the EU or even let Britain vote on it. Yet a strong Ukip turnout may put him in power by the back door.Mr Cameron must demand that migrants be able to move only if another country agrees it needs them.
“Next May he can only expect to win people’s votes by showing he can deliver what they clearly want. With true leadership and determination he could pull off one of the great election victories. Without it, his defeat will be ignominious — and history will not be kind to him.”
The Sun has a proud history of picking election winners in British politics and is perhaps most politically famed for its headline, “Its the Sun Wot Won it” from 1992, which claimed that its endorsement of Conservative leader John Major led to his surprise victory over Labour’s Neil Kinnock.