David Cameron: angling for a plum job?
“What do you get up to when you’re bored,” asked Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times. Perhaps you do the crossword, or weed the garden. I like to wander around the house killing wasps with elastic bands. But “what I’ve never done, so far, is ‘become foreign secretary’. The thought has not even occurred.” That is probably because among the many things I lack – tact, decorum, etc. – “I am also without the immense sense of entitlement and self-regard that would allow such a notion to invade my skull”. Not so David Cameron. The former PM has confessed to friends that he is “bored shitless”. At 52, he reckons he has one “big job” left in him, but he doesn’t want to go through the hassle of becoming an MP again (he’s not that bored); he thinks he could simply be placed in the Foreign Office.
He wouldn’t be the first former Tory PM to return to front-line politics, said The Scotsman. Alec Douglas-home became foreign secretary six years after his general election defeat in 1964. But though damaged by failure, he was still well regarded. The same can’t be said of the man who plunged Britain into crisis, before disappearing off to write (or not write) his memoirs. In 2010, a poll found that only 1% of voters considered the EU an issue of pressing concern. Cameron called the Brexit referendum to ease divisions in his party, and succeeded in dividing the whole country. And it seems the only thing that now unites the two sides is their anger towards the ex-pm. Leavers are furious that he didn’t prepare the UK for the result of the plebiscite he called, said Dia Chakravarty in The Sunday Telegraph; Remainers that he called it at all (although it was a manifesto pledge).
Yet Cameron could still have something to offer, said Paul Goodman on Conservative Home. His government was imperfect, but it “delivered a remarkable run of public service reform”. It also gave us austerity, said George Eaton in the New Statesman. Everywhere from the rise in rough sleepers to the crisis in the NHS, you see Cameron’s legacy. Look further, and consider the chaos caused by his intervention in Libya. Now he fancies being foreign secretary, said Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. Full marks for “self-assurance”, if nothing else.