38 Britain The EconomistSeptember 21st 2019
A
friend onceasked Margaret Thatcher what she would do dif-
ferently if she had her time again. After a pause for thought,
she replied: “I think I did pretty well the first time.” I don’t feel
quite the same way. I was wrong to withdraw Conservative meps
from the European Parliament’s centre-right alliance. I was wrong
to surround myself with so many chums from school and univer-
sity. On reflection the “Big Society” contained too much hot air. But
I do pride myself on one thing: I left behind a country that was far
more at ease with itself than the one I inherited.
The reason for this was the defining act of my career, the Brexit
referendum of 2016. After the result was announced, the pundit
class assured me with one voice that I didn’t deserve any credit for
doing the blindingly obvious. “Mr Cameron was confronted with
an open goal,” the Timeseditorialised. “All he did was kick the ball.”
These were often the same people who, before the vote, had in-
formed me that I risked unleashing monsters. I can only say that
the referendum didn’t feel like an open goal at the time. The cam-
paign tore the country apart and strained some of my closest
friendships. And the result was worryingly close. I sometimes tor-
ment myself, in my more masochistic moments, by imagining
what might have happened had it gone the other way!
The fever of Euroscepticism eventually broke and Britain en-
tered its current age of Euro-contentment. Nigel Farage moved to
America for a gig with Fox News and a slot on the speaking circuit.
I’m told that he has built quite a place in southern Florida—a mock-
Tudor mansion complete with red telephone boxes and a working
pub serving real ale, pie and mash. With his guiding hand re-
moved, the ukIndependence Party was captured by people who
were so nauseating and ill-disciplined that membership col-
lapsed. The Daily Mailwas the only big-selling newspaper to con-
tinue to champion the lost cause and, after a particularly foam-
flecked leader about “the traitor in Downing Street”, Viscount
Rothermere stepped in to replace Paul Dacre with Geordie Greig, a
sensible man as well as a good friend.
What went unreported at the time was that the death of Euro-
scepticism also took a lot of work on my part. A good chunk of the
Tory party had campaigned for the losing side. Millions of good
people had voted to leave, not because they were fed up with Eu-ropebutbecausetheywerefedupwith Britain. I tackled the Tory
problem by forgiving the most talented Leavers, such as Boris
Johnson and Michael Gove, while simultaneously marginalising
the irreconcilables. New mps only have to look at the desiccated
hulks of Iain Duncan Smith and Jacob Rees-Mogg lounging in the
parliamentary tea-room to know their fate if they step out of line. I
dealt with the problem of the left-behind by announcing the end of
austerity at the 2017 party conference and encouraging Boris, as
business secretary, to make revitalising the north and the Mid-
lands his priority—or, as he put it, a matter of “do or die”.
I also threw myself into the European issue in a way that I’d nev-
er done before. I learned two things from the frustrating renegotia-
tions leading up to the referendum. First, you can’t be a part-time
member of the club—you have to put in time sitting on the com-
mittees. Second, you can’t underestimate the inflexibility of trans-
national bureaucrats. I kept up the pressure, ably assisted by Sir
Ivan Rogers, agitating for the completion of the single market in
services and issuing blood-curdling warnings about what would
happen if they didn’t rethink freedom of movement. My position
was enormously strengthened by Britain’s close relations with
America, and my personal rapport with President Clinton (thank
goodness she beat that charlatan calling himself “Mr Brexit”).
I hope I’m not showing my colleagues any disrespect when I
add that my greatest helper was not anybody on my side. Jeremy
Corbyn is the gift that kept giving: an antediluvian leftist with nox-
ious views and even more noxious friends; a dim bulb who prefers
working on his allotment to mastering his briefs; and an old man
in what, on our side at least, is a young man’s game (I’m 17 years his
junior and I was one of the oldest members of our cabinet). At one
point the fanatic was even overheard muttering “Fuck business.”
Tony Blair used to say he felt physically sick while preparing for
prime minister’s questions against William Hague. I came to look
forward to my weekly duels with the Steptoe of Islington.
Thankfully, from my perspective, Corbyn was good at just one
thing—clinging onto power. He packed Labour’s executive com-
mittee with crazies and cronies. He introduced a programme of
“rolling deselections” to weed out moderates. (One of the things
that makes me proud to be a Conservative is that we would never
stoop to deselecting mps.) The more unelectable Labour became,
the more Corbyn and his Stalinist controllers were entrenched in
power. A tragedy for the country but a godsend for my party.But yet so far
Political obituarists like to quote Enoch Powell’s melancholy ob-
servation that “all political careers...end in failure”. I’m fortunate
to have escaped that fate. The past few years have been heady ones.
I don’t for a minute regret breaking my pledge not to stick around
for a third term. The election victory in 2020 exceeded our wildest
expectations. The Tory party is now everything I dreamed of all
those years ago in Notting Hill—a national party with mps in every
corner of the country, from Scotland to inner-London, and a thor-
oughly modern programme. The euhas at last caved in on freedom
of movement. And although I will miss Downing Street, in Ruth
Davidson the party now has an ideal new leader. I know that Boris
had a good claim to the job—and he has made clear that he is an-
noyed at being gazumped by a newcomer to Westminster—but the
party rightly decided that a second Bullingdon boy in a row would
be a mistake. Ruth is just the right person to carry on the work of
modernisation, consigning Scottish nationalism to the dustbin of
history in the same way that I saw off the madness of Brexit. 7Bagehot A counterfactual Cameron
This week David Cameron published his memoirs. Here we print an extract from the book he might
have written had he won the referendum