Lesson of Cameron’s failures: listen to the honest fears of voters

DAVID CAMERON’S confessions, mixed with self-justifications and catty sideswipes at former political colleagues, offer a worrying insight into our governing elite.

From his bizarre preparatory school, a curious mixture of snobbery, cruelty and squalor, to his cannabis-clouded days at Eton, Mr Cameron lived at an impossible distance from the experiences and problems of normal British people.

What is far worse is that he does not at any stage seem to have realised just how little he knew of the world outside his own magic circle.

The little private island on which he smoked marijuana is a fitting symbol of his remoteness from reality. His refusal to this day to say whether he took cocaine is, likewise, a reminder of his considerable arrogance.

And so, when he was wafted into office on a cloud of skilful public relations and little else, he lightly dismissed the huge, unavoidable European issue as a boring diversion about which people should stop ‘banging on’. And this was why it caught him in its talons and tore him apart.

He did not understand how much national independence and secure borders meant to so many people. He thought the EU controversy was just a Tory internal war and could be deflated by a referendum which he, the brilliant communicator, would win.

Likewise, he imagined that he could, by his own charm, negotiate concessions from Brussels that would pacify his critics.

When this turned out not to be so, he reached for the crude weapons of Project Fear. And when that did not work, he never really knew what had hit him.

But he was gone, back into his cushioned, relaxed world of assured privilege.

What do we learn from this? That there has been for many years a type of politician in this country – in all major parties – who has sneered at what he did not understand.

The era when such people could claim to rule us by effortless superiority has gone, for it turns out they were only lucky, not clever. The EU crisis swept that away. If only politicians will learn from this and listen to the fears of voters, it will have done some good. But we have paid a high price for this wisdom.