HOW THERESA TORPEDOED PM CAMERON
Explosive book by No10 insider lifts lid on ‘murder and betrayal’ over Brexit Secret text shows Boris kept changing mind and said Leave would LOSE Cameron predicted ‘submarine’ Theresa ‘could be PM in six months’
THE full extent of David Cameron’s frustration at Theresa May’s refusal to back him over the EU referendum is laid bare for the first time today.
He begged her to ‘come off the fence’ over Brexit – but she refused so often that one of Cameron’s allies questioned if she was secretly ‘an enemy agent’.
Another accused her of leaving Cameron to ‘fight alone’. No 10 became so fed up with her habit of disappearing when Cameron needed her that they nicknamed her ‘Submarine May’.
The bombshell disclosures come in a new book by Cameron’s Downing Street director of communications, Sir Craig Oliver. It reveals how Boris Johnson, now Foreign Secretary, reassured Cameron in a secret text that Brexit would be ‘crushed’ – nine minutes before putting himself at the head of the Leave campaign.
Twenty-four hours earlier, ‘depressed’ Johnson had sent another message which convinced Cameron he was about to ‘flipflop’ and back the Remain camp.
It also discloses how ‘political suicide bomber’ Michael Gove went back on a pledge made to Cameron at a family gathering at Chequers at Christmas to stay loyal to him in the referendum.
And it is revealed that Cameron considered clinging to power after losing the historic vote, but decided against it because it would leave him ‘being prepared for the slaughterhouse’.
Oliver, 47, a former BBC news
chief, was at Cameron’s side from 2011 to the day he quit over Brexit.
His book, Unleashing Demons, is the first insider’s account of the historic events that led to Cameron’s downfall. It reveals how:
May failed to support Cameron on 13 separate occasions;
She did reluctantly ‘come off the fence’ but only after a ‘visibly wound-up’ PM telephoned her during a train journey to give her a dressing down – then ‘hung up’ on her;
He predicted her ‘Sphinx-like’ antics could make her Prime Minister in six months. She beat his forecast by two weeks.
One of her excuses for not backing Cameron was that she wanted a weekend break with her husband Philip.
The disclosures are at odds with Mrs May’s reputation for straight talking.
Johnson fares equally badly in the book, which says that moments before he publicly vowed to lead the Leave campaign, he texted Cameron to say Brexit would be ‘crushed’. This newspaper can reveal that Johnson’s text said Brexit would ‘be crushed like the toad beneath the harrow’ – adapting a phrase used by Rudyard Kipling in a famous poem.
And the book reveals how Johnson had a secret last-minute wobble about leaving the EU. In between
‘A wound-up PM gave May a dressing down’
two phone messages saying he would back Brexit, he sent a hitherto undisclosed third message saying ‘depression is setting in’.
Jubilant Cameron believed ‘confused Inner’ Johnson was going to back him after all. He was wrong.
The claim that Cameron believed Johnson never really backed Brexit comes after a similar comment by Johnson’s Foreign Office deputy, Sir Alan Duncan.
Like Duncan, Oliver suggests the Brexit stance of ‘cavalier and reckless’ Johnson was a ploy to boost his hopes of becoming PM.
Oliver’s book savages Gove, accusing him of betraying his personal friend Cameron in the referendum and then Johnson in the subsequent Tory leadership contest.
Cameron was so angry with ‘deceitful’ Gove’s attacks that he threatened to denounce him publicly on television, raging: ‘I’m going to lose my temper and unleash one on these people on live TV soon.’
According to Oliver, Gove’s wife, the writer Sarah Vine, had assured Cameron at Chequers over Christmas that her husband would be on his side in the referendum.
When Gove set his own sights on No 10, Cameron questioned his mental fitness, saying that he was ‘prone to infarctions’ – or seizures. ‘Can you imagine him ever being left in charge of the country?’ Cameron demanded.
Oliver says he never trusted Gove, whose ‘legendary politeness seemed forced for someone so skilled at dinner party assassinations’.
He says Gove told George Osborne that Brexit would cause ‘scarring and burning’ to the economy. When Gove’s leadership bid crumbled after he ‘cut Boris off at the knees’, Oliver says: ‘He failed to realise that in acting as a suicide bomber, his first victim would be himself.’ His ‘fatal flaw was vaulting ambition and a preparedness to mislead’.
In his vivid and searingly honest eyewitness account, Oliver admits Cameron made mistakes in the referendum. But he says he was badly let down by ‘submarine’ May.
Oliver writes: ‘It’s the biggest thing the PM has faced and he doesn’t even know if the Home Secretary is backing him.’
The book solves the mystery of May’s sudden and strangely muted public declaration of support for Cameron over the referendum. He effectively held a gun to her head after she declined to back him at EU talks, claiming she was away for the weekend with her husband.
When Cameron heard the next day that she was threatening to back Brexit, he phoned her and demanded she back him – and ‘hung up,’ satisfied he had ‘made an impact on her’.
A chastened May rushed out a statement offering modest support – then went back to stonewalling.
Oliver offers grudging respect for her, saying: ‘In terms of pure politics, she played it well, having her cake and eating it, but it doesn’t seem fair on the PM who has treated her well.’ Similarly, he praises Johnson’s ‘rock star’ appeal and Gove’s ‘brilliance and wit’.
In emotional scenes in No10 as defeat loomed, Osborne urged Cameron to stay on, arguing history was ‘littered with governments that survive torrid times’.
Cameron rejected the advice, replying: ‘I’d be saying, “come and punch me as hard as you like.”’ In return, Cameron was loyal to his Chancellor to the last. Told that if he won, he might survive but some would call for Osborne’s head, he said they could ‘get stuffed’.
When the Brexit victory was confirmed, a dazed Oliver lurched out of Downing Street into Whitehall where he ‘retched’.
When Oliver saw Cameron the morning after the vote, the PM said simply: ‘Well, that didn’t go to plan!’