The "Mail" backed Theresa May as the candidate to succeed David Cameron as Prime Minister following his resignation after the referendum result was announced. Dacre and May had met shortly before she announced her leadership bid. More than a year before May became prime minister, Gaby Hinsliff wrote in a February 2015 "Guardian" article that "one reason she gets on so well with "Daily Mail" editor-in-chief Paul Dacre is that both prefer talking business to pleasure". Following May's announcement, the next day's front page of the "Mail" insisted "It must be Theresa" accompanied by an editorial "which bear's Dacre's hallmarks" (according to Anthony Barnett) commenting "what the country which was needs most is a solid and steady hand on the tiller". According to Hinsliff, Dacre considers May's unsuccessful leadership rival, Boris Johnson, as "morally reprehensible, because of his serial affairs, and fundamentally unserious". Despite this, "Mail" contributor Sarah Vine in a leaked email, believed Dacre (and Rupert Murdoch) would back Johnson if her husband, Michael Gove, was also part of the same ticket. "The Independent"s John Rentoul also saw Gove as being Dacre and Murdoch's preference, but for Gove himself, "that is not a great pitch".