‘WHEN OUR SON DIED, IT WAS AS IF THE WORLD STOPPED TURNING’
high profile, Michael Gove in particular, to win that crown”.
He writes: “The conclusion I am left with is that he risked an outcome he didn’t believe in because it would help his political career.”
On Mr Gove, the former PM added: “One quality shone through – disloyalty. Disloyalty to me and, later, disloyalty to Boris.”
And he said Mr Gove became “an ambassador for the truth-twisting age of populism”.
He added: “By the end, Boris and Michael seemed to me to be different people. Boris had backed something he didn’t believe in. Michael had backed something he did perhaps believe in, but in the process had broken with his friends... while taking up positions that were completely against his political identity.
“Both then behaved appallingly, attacking their own government, turning a blind eye to their side’s unpleasant actions and becoming ambassadors for the expert-trashing, truth-twisting age of populism.”
Other extracts from the book detail how Mr Cameron accused the pair of effectively “trashing” the Government during the 2016 EU referendum campaign. He adds that he is fearful of what will happen after Brexit.
But colleagues of Mr Johnson yesterday rallied behind his handling of the ongoing negotiations with the EU.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay said a “landing zone” was now in sight for an agreement with the EU, and that a “huge amount has been happening behind the scenes”.
Home Secretary Priti Patel said: “The Prime Minister is fully committed to getting a deal.
“I hope the country has heard [Mr Johnson’s] sheer commitment and determination to ensure that we leave on October 31, and also that the entire machinery of government now is focused on getting that deal and is planning and preparing to leave with a deal.”
In Mr Cameron’s long-awaited book, For The Record, the ex-PM also writes about his decisions regarding the EU referendum.
He said: “There are those who will never forgive me for holding it, or for failing to deliver the outcome – Britain staying in a reformed EU – that I sought.
“I deeply regret the outcome and accept that my approach failed. The decisions I took contributed to that failure. I failed.”
But on the new Prime Minister’s recent decision to prorogue Parliament for five weeks and withdraw the whip from 21 Tory MPs – including the likes of Tory grandees Ken Clarke and Sir Nicholas Soames – Mr Cameron expressed his disapproval.
He added: “Taking the whip from hard-working Conservative MPs and sharp practices using prorogation of Parliament have rebounded. I didn’t THE death of David Cameron’s six-year-old son Ivan was so shocking “it was as if the world stopped turning,” the ex-premier reveals in his memoirs.
The couple had watched helplessly as their first-born child – above with his father in a family snap for the then Tory leader’s 2008 Christmas card – suffered up to 30 seizures a day. “For the mother who bore him and loved him so deeply, it was a torture that was tearing her apart,” Mr Cameron writes.
The couple feared the life of their son, stricken with a rare neurological condition, was destined to be short.
But the end, which came in February 2009, is now “almost too painful to relate, even to recall,” Mr Cameron writes.
“Nothing, absolutely nothing, can prepare you for the reality of losing your darling boy in this way. It was as if the world stopped turning.” On the night he died, Ivan’s stomach swelled up and he was in agony.
Mr Cameron stayed at home to look after the couple’s other children but soon feared his wife’s dash to the hospital with Ivan – a trip they had made so many times – was different.
He raced to be by Ivan’s side but was too late: “A team was standing over Ivan in the emergency room, working desperately to resuscitate him. But he had gone... he had a massive organ failure.”
Ivan was apparently heatlhy when he was born in April 2002 but diagnosed with Ohtahara Syndrome, named after the Japanese doctor who first observed it. support either of those things. Neither do I think a no-deal Brexit is a good idea.”
The former PM described Mr Johnson as “easy to work with” but admitted that there had been “issues” between the pair.
Mr Johnson has publicly declared he is not concerned about what his predecessor would write about him.
He said: “Absolutely nothing that David Cameron says in his memoirs in the course of the next few days will diminish the affection and respect in which I hold him.
“Not least for what he did in turning this country around after Labour left it bankrupt. I think he has a very distinguished record and a legacy to be proud of.”
‘I deeply regret the outcome and accept that my approach failed’