David Cameron is behaving admirably for an ex-PM
David Cameron has comported himself almost flawlessly since stepping down. I realise that, in the current climate, this is an unfashionable thing to say. Because our brains are wired to overemphasise recent events at the expense of distant ones, we tend to judge the former PM by the EU poll rather than by, say, the impressive way he tackled our debt crisis.
Many Leavers still seethe about the things he said during the referendum, many Remainers will never forgive him for calling it in the first place. Both sides criticise him for leaving office having promised not to, and then resigning as an MP, again having promised not to.
Still, it’s worth taking note of how he has behaved since. He hasn’t pestered his successors with public advice, though he quietly campaigned in several marginal seats at last year’s election.
The only interview he has given about Brexit struck exactly the right note. He wished the result had been different, he said, “but, to be frank, Britain is the fifth or sixth largest economy in the world, and it is a legitimate choice to be a friend and partner of the EU rather than a member”.
We know that he is also patriotic and upbeat in private. A stray microphone at the Davos schmoozefest caught him telling a businessman that things were working out better than he had expected – a refreshing admission from a politician.
You might think that I’m setting the bar a bit low. Surely the very least we should expect from a public figure is to stick up for Britain and its people. But plenty of politicians make no secret of their view that those people, or at least 52 per cent of them, are chumps. Worse, they struggle to hide their disappointment at the continuing strength of our economy. Every other former prime minister has, in effect, rejected the Brexit verdict. Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and John Major no longer even pretend to respect their former employers, the British electorate.
Those who criticise Cameron for holding the referendum are really criticising the nation as a whole, which demanded one. They forget that the idea of an In/Out vote was first taken up by the Liberal Democrats under Nick Clegg, who spent much of the campaign pompously insisting that the eventual result be respected. Their suggestion is that Cameron should have dropped his manifesto pledge, as Blair dropped his promise of a referendum on the EU constitution. That contempt for democracy, so widespread among Europhiles, helps explain why Brussels became so unpopular in the first place.
Cameron’s critics expected Brexit to be a disaster that would define him as Appeasement defines Chamberlain, or Suez Eden. So far, though, that’s not the way things are working out. Exports, GDP, the stock exchange, manufacturing output and employment are all rising, despite our ineptness in the negotiations.
A lot of people are going to look silly if Brexit succeeds. Perhaps that explains their increasingly shrill tone.
How to describe the election of the 19th Earl of Devon to the House of Lords by 31 other aristocrats in a special vote? We might call it splendidly silly or absurdly antiquated. But one thing we really can’t call it is “a mockery of democracy”, the description bizarrely hit upon by Darren Hughes of the Electoral Reform Society.
Democracy doesn’t mean “something I happen to like”. The surviving 92 hereditary peers are now, paradoxically, the only elected element in the Upper House. The real “mockery of democracy” is that the government hand-picks their 700 colleagues. The elemental function of Parliament, after all, is to hold the government to account. It’s beyond ridiculous for the executive to appoint one of the two legislative chambers.
Ninety-two hereditary places were salvaged in 1999 as part of a deal brokered by the current Marquess of Salisbury, who wanted to ensure that Tony Blair would not renege on his promise of full reform. Those 92 hereditaries, Salisbury correctly foresaw, would be a standing reminder that the appointed peers were supposed to be temporary. How odd to attack the reminders, rather than the system they were put there to rebuke. FOLLOW Daniel Hannan on Twitter @DanielJHannan; at telegraph.co.uk/opinion