Cameron could scarcely have made a bigger hash of the EU vote if he’d tried

WHATEVER happens next Thursday, an almighty mess will be left behind. In the Tory party there will be acrimony and division. In the country as a whole, the political class will have never been held in such low esteem.

This has been a dreadful campaign, full of scare stories and lies, and almost totally bereft of anything approximating what might be called statesmanlike vision. I believe our forebears would be ashamed and aghast if they could see the depths to which our great nation has sunk.

There has been fault on both sides. Remain and Leave have joined in peddling wild exaggerations and untruths, and they have both largely avoided serious and reasoned discussion about the future of this country.

Blame is therefore widely shared. But there is one man who, if he had chosen to, could have spared us much of the rancour and vituperation. He, above all others, has succeeded in turning this debate into an ugly bare-knuckle fight.

The consequence is that it is very hard to see how the man of whom I speak — David Cameron — can survive next week’s referendum.

If Brexit wins, he is finished. Yet even if Remain prevails — unless it is by an overwhelming majority — he will be a wounded, discredited and unhappy Prime Minister.

Arrogance

It didn’t have to be like this. I’m sure Mr Cameron didn’t expect it to be — even in his worst nightmares.

But a combination in him of carelessness, arrogance and something close to contemptuousness has turned what could, and should, have been a spirited and essentially positive process into a destructive fight to the death.

Let’s go back. I shall give Mr Cameron the benefit of the doubt, and assume that when he spoke of obtaining a ‘new settlement’ for Britain in his Bloomberg speech in January 2013, he meant what he said.

But once the negotiations began — and no one can accuse the Prime Minister of not undertaking them energetically — it quickly became clear that our obdurate EU partners would only offer him a small slice of his not-particularly-taxing demands.

He, of course, made the fatal error of saying he was certain an agreement could be reached, and at no stage threatened to walk away from negotiations. On the contrary, he seemed desperate to conclude them come what may, though it had been suggested that a referendum would not take place until 2017.

Even when he came back with his paltry package, he had a choice. He could have frankly told the British people that the deal was in some respects a disappointing one, and left it to them to judge whether it was sufficient. Instead, he insulted our intelligence by claiming that a self-evidently thin agreement was a triumph.

Have you noticed that Mr Cameron and the Remain camp have made virtually no attempt in recent weeks to defend this supposedly stupendous deal? The reason they seldom mention it is they know any such claims could be effortlessly demolished by their critics.

Nor have we heard from the Remainers a single rousing argument for staying members of the EU, such as standing by our partners or safeguarding a continent which this country spent much blood and gold in liberating over 70 years ago.

No, in place of such arguments a lie machine has been installed at No 10 which is spewing out preposterous and unbelievable forecasts and scare stories. The man who said as recently as last November that Britain could thrive outside the EU now predicts plummeting house prices, falling incomes and economic mayhem.

To which the obvious response was, and is: how can someone who issues such apocalyptic warnings about the allegedly calamitous effects of a Brexit vote have ever thought it sensible to call a referendum in the first place?

Hysterical

In short, Mr Cameron has intentionally upped the ante. Instead of largely standing aside from the debate — as did Harold Wilson, who was Labour Prime Minister during the 1975 referendum on the Common Market — he has put himself at the head of an increasingly hysterical and outlandish movement with an overwrought George Osborne at his side.

I don’t deny that the Leave camp has sometimes replied in kind, though its leading lights, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, have for the most part maintained a more good-humoured and statesmanlike air than Messrs Cameron and Osborne.

My point is simply that it is the Prime Minister, above all, who has lowered the tone, and turned what should have been a respectful, if inevitably lively, debate into a nasty, and very unBritish, slanging match.

Last week we witnessed a new low as No 10 sanctioned attacks on Boris Johnson to smear the politician regarded as the main threat to Remain. Delivering scripted sallies during a TV debate, Energy Secretary Amber Rudd alluded to Boris’s wandering hands, and accused him of being solely driven by a desire to become PM.

Misjudgment has followed misjudgment on Mr Cameron’s part. The first of many self-inflicted wounds came during the last general election campaign when he unguardedly disclosed that he would be standing down before the 2020 election, thereby undermining his own authority.

The truth is that throughout this whole sorry business he could have scarcely made a greater mess of things if he had deliberately set out to damage his party, his country — and himself.

For the irony of all this is that Mr Cameron has placed his own job on the line, and his reputation at risk, by going nuclear. In 1975, few people expected Harold Wilson to resign if he lost the referendum since, in common with most politicians on both sides, he had conducted himself with decorum.

Now, Tory MPs are queuing up to plunge the knife in the Prime Minister’s back — and his front.

Warfare

And as he finds himself fighting for his political life, so his self-interest lies in making ever more outrageous claims in the hope of scaring voters into voting for Remain. He is in the unedifying position of having to exaggerate the perils of Brexit, and talking down his country, in order to survive.

In other words, the Prime Minister’s own best interests, and those of his country, are increasingly divergent, since it is surely indisputable that all this talk of Armageddon is not good for Britain, as sensible Remain supporters will concede.

Win or lose, I’m afraid Mr Cameron is almost bound to be left injured, possibly fatally. Whatever one’s view of him, there can be no joy in seeing him recklessly throwing so much away.

Since he became Prime Minister in 2010, the economy has rebounded, and the public finances are much improved. The country recovered on his watch.

Nor should anyone except for Corbynistas rejoice at the prospect of a fractious and divided Tory party. If Mr Cameron is ousted, there won’t be a smooth transition. I foresee months, if not years, of internecine warfare among Conservatives.

Perhaps the greatest casualty of what has happened is the loss of public trust. Even voters drawn to Remain recoil at the debasement of political discourse, and regret that lying has become such an accepted part of political life. That is a sad legacy to leave behind.

Of course, this was always going to be a hotly fought contest, since people feel very strongly about the EU and the future of this country. But it could have been an elevating, hopeful and honest debate. Why on earth did it have to end like this?