I don’t agree with your analysis. I accept he wanted to unify the Tories, but by settling the argument the other way. Your opinion thst the Tories are a unified group opposed to the EU simply doesn’t stand up to objective scrutiny.
As I said in a post earlier this morning, his mistake wasn’t limited to calling the referendum. Him heading up the Remain campaign and the way it was conducted were also catastrophic errors.I don’t think he would have called for the vote if he seriously thought leave could win.
Complacency was remains biggest enemy, they had no strategy and as such were forced into the leave orbit for debating - its costs us £350m a week to be in the EU, oh no it doesn’t it only costs us £200m (or whatever the number was)… now all people know is it costs us money, not what we get for that money.
The cowardice was pandering to the extremes in his party and farage rather than meeting them head on and putting them in their box from the start.I was thinking about Cameron the other day, and was wishing for a penny for his thoughts. His public utterances since the vote have been platitudes around the will of the people being expressed, but privately he must be horrified at what he’s unleashed. Whatever anyone’s thoughts on his politics, he’s far less prone than Johnson to self delusion and his legacy will be important to him (as it will to all politicians) which is now utterly destroyed.
The fundamental mistakes he made were threefold. Firstly, calling the referendum; secondly heading up the Remain campaign; thirdly, the listless and ineffectual way he ran that campaign.
Think he was right to resign though, and I don’t think it’s fair to characterise that as cowardice, especially given the grotesque way that Johnson clung on to power, and the way that Truss will too.
That’s a sideshow though. Up to that point, I actually thought he was a capable and sure footed politician, and I’ve been proved conspicuously and spectacularly wrong on that score. He made a series of judgement calls that have caused more damage to this country than any other in peacetime since industrialisation. He’s opened a box and unleadhed forces that simply cannot be contained and in the process divided that nation, caused the break up of the Union, hugely reduced our standing and reputation in the World and made us discernibly poorer.
What a legacy.
Have read your posts with interest but cannot imagine who else could’ve headed up the remain campaign; it surely had to be the incumbent prime minister. That the remain campaign was poorly run I accept, but years and years of setting the country, especially England, against the EU was always going to make it hard for the Conservatives and Cameron to make a convincing case for ‘the status quo’.As I said in a post earlier this morning, his mistake wasn’t limited to calling the referendum. Him heading up the Remain campaign and the way it was conducted were also catastrophic errors.
Also the way the referedum was even set up: a straghtforward "Yes/No", a straightforward 50/50. that in itself aused years of fighting and politic/economic interita. At the very least, a path to leave the EU should have been already defined so that people were voting on that. And also a higher majority could have been negotiated.As I said in a post earlier this morning, his mistake wasn’t limited to calling the referendum. Him heading up the Remain campaign and the way it was conducted were also catastrophic errors.
Because he wanted to unify the Tories..... you have to ask yourself why the Tory Press was anti Eu for many many years before the referendum ... had the country voted remain the negative press would've continued. The Tories always wanted us out of the Eu and constantly told lies to facilitate that.