Book of the week
For the Record by David Cameron (HarperCollins, $55)
Why do political memoirs have to bang on so? There is a rumour that David Cameron was told to lose 100,000 words from the manuscript he submitted to his publisher. Despite that hefty cut, For the Record still comes in at a daunting 700-plus pages.
A modern, compassionate (to the reader at least) Conservative would have given us an entertaining canter through his career highs and lows, but
Cameron throws in everything, including the kitchen sink.
I fear the man who wrote this book is not altogether sane. He has, in fact, been driven a bit mad by events. (Annoying the Queen, as he did so foolishly with an indiscreet remark about the Scottish referendum, is proof.) The ‘‘rational optimist’’ who bounded into Downing St in 2010 is traumatised by the furies unleashed by his decision to hold a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU.
Cameron is a good enough historian to know that the six years he served as prime minister will be remembered solely for that seismic step. He is doomed to be the Brexit PM. It’s a tragedy that runs like a weeping wound through this book. He admits that, every day, he returns to the events that led up to the Leave vote ‘‘over and over again. Reliving and rethinking the decisions, rerunning alternatives and what-might-have-beens.’’
It’s astonishing that it’s only 38 months since David Cameron left Downing St and we have already forgotten that blessed time when Britain wasn’t seething with acrimony.
But there was no escaping Europe. That, at least, is Cameron’s central contention. From the time the UK crashed out of the ERM, which young David witnessed as
an assistant to the then chancellor, Norman Lamont, it was predetermined that some day a government would have to grant a referendum on the relationship with Europe which had deepened, via treaties, but without the consent of the British people.
Funnily enough, the person who comes across as the biggest Eurosceptic is the author himself. Anecdote after frustrated anecdote confirms the hypocritical, corrupt behaviour of the EU.
Samantha Cameron, who shines out as the gin-swigging, no-nonsense heroine of this story, accuses her husband of suffering ‘‘man under the car-bonnet’’ syndrome.
Ultimately, that is where Cameron went wrong with Brexit. Every economic forecaster and important person backed Remain, he protests, warning that leaving the EU would make people worse off. But voters thought some things were more important than money.
The finest chapter is called ‘‘Our Darling Ivan’’. One of Cameron’s lasting legacies will be the memory of the PM pushing his profoundly disabled son in his buggy, proudly showing him to the world. The inscription on Ivan Cameron’s grave is impossible to read without crying for the child and for the father who lost him. – Allison Pearson, The Sunday Telegraph
He is doomed to be the Brexit PM. It’s a tragedy that runs like a weeping wound through this book.