Almost everywhere I go, people ask me: “Where is David Cameron?” I must admit that I occasionally bump into him. He gives a superficial impression of insouciance, but one hears on the grapevine that, privately, he regrets having called that referendum.
Now we also hear that “friends” of Cameron say he wishes at some stage to return to a cabinet job, although presumably not under Theresa May. Has he no shame?
The people who ask me for Cameron’s whereabouts are of course not remotely interested in them. They are furious that, having promised to stick it out whatever the outcome, he simply walked away.
With a referendum aimed at resolving fissures over Europe within the Tory party having actually widened them, Cameron joined the shortlist of postwar PMs who have made truly catastrophic misjudgments. Two others who come readily to mind are Anthony Eden, who in 1956 led the nation into the Suez fiasco, and Tony Blair, who has not been forgiven for his role in supporting the disastrous US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
All living prime ministers who preceded Cameron – Sir John Major, Blair and Gordon Brown – are united in arguing that all potential versions of Brexit would damage this country economically – a point underlined in the Office for Budget Responsibility’s economic and fiscal outlook last week, after whose publication the OBR’s director, Robert Chote, poured buckets of cold water over Chancellor Philip Hammond’s wholly unconvincing claims of a Brexit dividend.
The report itself observes that, even before Brexit, “the economy was 2% to 2.5% smaller by mid-2018 than it would have been if the referendum had not been called”.
In common with so many of us, these former PMs can hardly believe what is going on. It is tragic that Blair, who speaks and writes so convincingly about the follies of Brexit, carries so little credibility. By contrast Major, who for years bided his time about re-entering the public debate, has been spurred into action by the referendum, and by the manifest chaos that has ensued.
In last week’s London Evening Standard he argued that “the moral case for a second vote has never been more powerful”. Major pointed out that: “Since June 2016, there are now nearly 2 million more young people who are eligible to vote ... of those certain to vote, an astonishing 87% would opt to stay in the European Union.”
It is not uninteresting that the newspaper in which Major’s article appeared has as its editor one George Osborne, who is also a passionate Remainer, and who was asleep at the wheel – as, I think, he now acknowledges – when not opposing strongly enough Cameron’s decision to go ahead with the referendum.
Osborne overdid the resolve he and Cameron had come to: Blair and Brown had been in continual conflict, as, in the latter stages of their professional relationship, had Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson; Cameron and Osborne were not going to be the same, alas.
Osborne rightly regards the OBR’s view that the British economy’s underlying growth rate is, at 1.5% per annum (desperate by comparison with other advanced economies), “one of the hidden costs of the uncertainty of Brexit”. But, surprise, surprise, he does not add that it is also one of the not so hidden costs of the hugely damaging policy of austerity upon which he and Cameron embarked in 2010.
In which context, I am reassured to note that most commentators have not been fooled by the claim that Philip Hammond’s budget last week – a cynical attempt to ward off the “Brexstremists” within and without the cabinet – heralded an end to austerity. Unfortunately I fear that reports of the death of austerity have been much exaggerated. Just ask the London police: in the face of a serious crimewave, the traditional party of law and order offered them not a penny more in terms of extra resources.
But back to Brexit, from which it is difficult to escape. I attended the People’s Vote rally of 700,000 or so protesters the Saturday before last. I was much struck by Tory Remainer Sarah Wollaston’s analogy: a patient may have signed an agreement for surgery to take place; but he or she should be at liberty to change their mind when confronted with new and more enlightening information. I think that is what is happening with regard to Brexit.
The anti-Brexit demonstration should not be ignored. I bet that in his heart of hearts Tony Blair now wishes he had listened to the anti- Iraq protesters. If he had, people might be more inclined to listen to him now. But at least they should be listening to Sir John Major.
