The news today that David Cameron is to stand down with immediate
effect as an MP probably should not surprise me. He gambled on the Brexit vote,
lost, stood down as prime minister and has nothing left to achieve in domestic
political terms. But I was immediately transported back to his final day as PM on
13 July when he was asked by former Chancellor Ken Clarke, now a backbench MP, whether
he will “still be an active participant
in this House as it faces a large number of problems over the next few years?”
Cameron replied, “I will watch these exchanges from the Back Benches.” So we’ll take that as a “yes” then?
However, as James Kirkup pointed out in the Telegraph, “he fought the EU referendum campaign promising not to quit if he lost, then quit when he lost.” In fact, Kirkup’s article sums up pretty well, I thought, the issues surrounding Cameron’s premiership. “Flouncing out of Parliament in this way is so telling: it speaks to something fundamental about Mr Cameron's character and his approach to politics: a lack of seriousness, the absence of real commitment. Yes, he wanted the job and yes he put the hours in, to the cost of his family. But he would never die in a ditch for his political beliefs … It was always enough to get by, to do just enough to get the top grade and do better than the rest [although] Mr Cameron's just-good-enough performance was, in fact, pretty good, and probably better than any of the others who might have done his job at the time. Yet that lack of commitment, the sense that he never anything more than a gentleman amateur trying his hand at governing out of a combination of duty, boredom and vanity will stay with him when the histories are written.”
In some ways, perhaps, Cameron was a throwback to an earlier political age, the era of the gentleman amateur. And at a time when we criticise our politicians for being too professional and for not having had experience outside politics before entering parliament, it may seem hypocritical to criticise Cameron for not being cut from this cloth. But running away from a problem of his own making really takes the biscuit. It is one thing to quit as PM but then to disappear from politics altogether because he does not want to be seen as a “distraction” simply does not wash. In his view “leaving parliament is the right thing to do.” In what way, exactly? Although Johnson, Gove and Farage were the arsonists in chief who set the Brexit fire alight, let’s not forget that it was Cameron who supplied them with the matches. This was a problem of his creation and he owes it to the country he claims to love to help fix it.
As Cameron heads for the political exit, questions will continue to be raised about his political legacy. But in order to answer this question forces us to ask what he stood for in the first place. He came to office in 2010 promising to detoxify the Conservative brand. Arguably, he made matters worse. After conceding in 2006 that the party had alienated voters by "banging on" about Europe, he reaped the whirlwind with his Brexit promise. Promises to build a “Big Society,” designed to “generate, develop and showcase new ideas to help people to come together in their neighbourhoods to do good things” were quietly dropped. His Chancellor’s austerity policy, which Cameron failed to rein in, did the Tories more harm than good and efforts to devolve regional government are being scaled back by Theresa May’s government.
As I have suggested previously – and as James Kirkup’s article indicates – Cameron at his best was a very effective political performer. But he was always a more effective tactician than strategist and once the tactics on the EU referendum went wrong, the game was up. Prior to the 2009 election, former BoE Governor Mervyn King privately criticised Cameron and George Osborne for their lack of experience and tendency to think about issues only in terms of their electoral impact. As both men fade into political history, it is hard not to think that Cameron’s government will go down as one in which the winning of small victories was more important than getting the bigger picture right. Following his Bloomberg speech in January 2013 I concluded that it was difficult to avoid the view that Cameron was playing fast and loose with the national interest for uncertain political gains. For that, he deserves to be judged harshly.
However, as James Kirkup pointed out in the Telegraph, “he fought the EU referendum campaign promising not to quit if he lost, then quit when he lost.” In fact, Kirkup’s article sums up pretty well, I thought, the issues surrounding Cameron’s premiership. “Flouncing out of Parliament in this way is so telling: it speaks to something fundamental about Mr Cameron's character and his approach to politics: a lack of seriousness, the absence of real commitment. Yes, he wanted the job and yes he put the hours in, to the cost of his family. But he would never die in a ditch for his political beliefs … It was always enough to get by, to do just enough to get the top grade and do better than the rest [although] Mr Cameron's just-good-enough performance was, in fact, pretty good, and probably better than any of the others who might have done his job at the time. Yet that lack of commitment, the sense that he never anything more than a gentleman amateur trying his hand at governing out of a combination of duty, boredom and vanity will stay with him when the histories are written.”
In some ways, perhaps, Cameron was a throwback to an earlier political age, the era of the gentleman amateur. And at a time when we criticise our politicians for being too professional and for not having had experience outside politics before entering parliament, it may seem hypocritical to criticise Cameron for not being cut from this cloth. But running away from a problem of his own making really takes the biscuit. It is one thing to quit as PM but then to disappear from politics altogether because he does not want to be seen as a “distraction” simply does not wash. In his view “leaving parliament is the right thing to do.” In what way, exactly? Although Johnson, Gove and Farage were the arsonists in chief who set the Brexit fire alight, let’s not forget that it was Cameron who supplied them with the matches. This was a problem of his creation and he owes it to the country he claims to love to help fix it.
As Cameron heads for the political exit, questions will continue to be raised about his political legacy. But in order to answer this question forces us to ask what he stood for in the first place. He came to office in 2010 promising to detoxify the Conservative brand. Arguably, he made matters worse. After conceding in 2006 that the party had alienated voters by "banging on" about Europe, he reaped the whirlwind with his Brexit promise. Promises to build a “Big Society,” designed to “generate, develop and showcase new ideas to help people to come together in their neighbourhoods to do good things” were quietly dropped. His Chancellor’s austerity policy, which Cameron failed to rein in, did the Tories more harm than good and efforts to devolve regional government are being scaled back by Theresa May’s government.
As I have suggested previously – and as James Kirkup’s article indicates – Cameron at his best was a very effective political performer. But he was always a more effective tactician than strategist and once the tactics on the EU referendum went wrong, the game was up. Prior to the 2009 election, former BoE Governor Mervyn King privately criticised Cameron and George Osborne for their lack of experience and tendency to think about issues only in terms of their electoral impact. As both men fade into political history, it is hard not to think that Cameron’s government will go down as one in which the winning of small victories was more important than getting the bigger picture right. Following his Bloomberg speech in January 2013 I concluded that it was difficult to avoid the view that Cameron was playing fast and loose with the national interest for uncertain political gains. For that, he deserves to be judged harshly.
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