It's all Posh Dave's fault

Like me, perhaps you've wondered how David Cameron could have been stupid enough, what with Eton and all that expensive education, to think that a referendum on the EU would somehow pour oil on the troubled waters of  the civil war in the Tory party between the people like Ken Clarke, Anna Soubry on the one hand, and the-former-disgraced-minister Liam Fox, the-yet-to-be disgraced-former-minister Boris Johnson, Jacob 18th Century and Michael Gobby Gove, on the other. The most rudimentary intelligence would have concluded that bringing the argument, kept bubbling under for 40+ years, to the forefront of political life, was only likely to add oxygen to the fires of discontentment in his party. Now it seems that Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, has released information about conversations they had which may throw some light on his motivations.

It appears that our esteemed ex-prime minister failed to realise how being associated with his toxic party had damaged the Liberal Democrats and that, as a result, their seats in parliament were so diminished that there was no coalition. In fact, a small majority for the Conservative party, and thus no coalition partner was available to stop the folly and take the blame. Just in case you've forgotten, a small majority which his successor would manage, unbelievably, in an even more incompetent style, to lose. Remember the mantra 'strong and stable'?

He did all this, not because of any consideration of national interest but because he worried about splitting the party and imagined that was the likelier hazard than Britain actually leaving the European Union. When it turned out he was wrong, he shrugged and left the stage, humming a little tune (clink the link to watch) with the jaunty gait of a man who has never had to clear up his own mess; whose tables have always been laid before he arrives and cleared by the staff after he leaves.

And now, nearly two years later, he tells us he thinks he made the right choices. Now we know that former prime ministers aren’t generally in the business of trashing their own legacies and, since the Brexit plebiscite is certain to be Cameron’s biggest contribution to the history books, he doesn’t have much incentive to think of it as a monumental blunder. Just as Blair presumed his silver tongue would seduce the UN into backing that legality-conferring second resolution, Cameron blithely expected to charm fellow European leaders into doing his will. He had the public-school arrogance to believe that he could negotiate a deal with his EU partners so good that he would win a subsequent referendum… a huge miscalculation.

And as a result of his misjudgement, the Tory party, which he thought he could bring together with the referendum plan (and then blame the Liberal Democrats when it all fell apart) is now engaged in what seems to some may be a terminal civil war. Oh well, if nothing else good comes out of Brexit, the damage that it will have done to the toxic Tories is a small chink of light in the darkness.

Nice one, Dave. Be careful what you wish for. It may come back and bite you on the bum.