David
Cameron is finished. His failure over Europe will define his place in
history
James Kirkup 24 JUNE
2016
David Cameron is
finished, heading for a place in history as the Prime Minister who
gambled with Britain’s place in the European Union and his own
career, and lost.
The only question
left is how long Mr Cameron hangs on in the job, and that will be
decided not by him but by his opponents within his party.
He is finished
because the country has rejected his case on the biggest decision the
UK has taken in a generation.
So ignore all that
talk from Leave-backing Tories about letters of loyalty and wanting
Mr Cameron to stay on. Ignore all Mr Cameron’s pre-referendum
claims that he would stay on regardless of the result.
That’s just
political game-playing, a matter of how to manage the first days and
weeks of the new era of British history that starts today. An era
that Mr Cameron never wanted to start.
The raw, brutal fact
is that Mr Cameron asked the country to trust him on a question of
the greatest importance, asking voters to put their trust in him over
the future of their country. And those voters didn’t listen.
In fact, they did
more than ignore Mr Cameron. In some cases, they took violent
exception to his argument.
It doesn’t matter
that the result was narrow. Mr Cameron called this vote and he lost
it. He told Britain to remain in the EU, and Britain chose to leave.
No prime minister can survive that.
Whatever his critics
can say about him, even Mr Cameron’s worst enemies would concede
that he is a man with a genuine sense of duty, a feeling that he has
to do his best by the country, even if it has rejected him.
That sense of duty
will inform what he does next.
It may be that his
initial reaction is to talk about staying on to lead the country
through the difficult decisions to come: when and how to begin the
process of departure from the EU, and so on. And that may happen.
But those decisions
will in reality be made by others: Boris Johnson and Michael Gove and
other Leave-minded Tories will call the shots for Mr Cameron, even if
he remains in office for a few weeks while the Conservative Party
crowns his replacement.
Equally, it may be
that Mr Cameron talks about trying to heal the divisions the
referendum has revealed and created.
But many will feel
that he bears much of the responsibility for those divisions, not
least because of the way he chose to campaign for Remain,
aggressively questioning the judgement and even the integrity of
those who stood against him.
David Cameron's time
in office - by numbersPlay! 01:04
As he contemplates
the end of his premiership, it is worth recalling the bleak ironies
of this outcome.
Mr Cameron became
Conservative leader urging his party to stop “banging on” about
Europe.
The issue was never
one of the most important in politics for him.
It may have excited
deep passion in other Tories, but Mr Cameron never saw it as much
more than a problem to be managed, or perhaps deferred.
His European policy
was a series of IOU notes, promises to his party to take dramatic
action against the EU, but always tomorrow, not today: from
withdrawing the Tories from the European People's Party to promising
a referendum on the European Constitution, his approach was always to
placate his party by promising action, then try to find a way not to
deliver on that promise.
That strategy of
defer and delay ended last year when he surprised even himself and
won a full Commons majority, a victory that meant he had no excuse
not to hold an EU referendum he always knew had the power to destroy
him.
Today, some will
ask: would he have called this election if he thought this would
happen?
The question rests
on a false premise, because Mr Cameron called this referendum fully
aware that this could happen.
The pattern of the
results makes the blow to Mr Cameron’s authority all the more
grievous. Simply, he lost England and was left reliant on Scotland
and London for support.
It is now clear that
we can no longer speak of London as being part of England. The UK
capital may sit geographically in England, but its political outlook,
like its economy, is so widely different as to justify a different
constitutional status. This is now the United Kingdom of England,
Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London.
And how long will
that union remain in its current form?
For while Scotland
may have agreed with Mr Cameron on the EU, by going against the UK
verdict on Brexit, Scots have given the Scottish National Party the
perfect case for another vote on independence.
Before this
referendum, Mr Cameron’s proudest achievement was probably
preserving the Union by winning the Scottish independence referendum
in 2014.
He didn’t call
that vote, but he chose to call the EU referendum.
And as a result of a
referendum he chose to call, the future of the UK itself is now in
doubt, since Scottish independence is now one of many existential
issues back at the top of the political agenda.
Mr Cameron is
already facing up to a place in history defined by defeat on Europe,
the issue he never wanted to define his leadership.
But from his point
of view, posterity’s verdict may get worse still. History may yet
record him as the man whose European failure led to the break-up of
Britain.
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