Cameron holds a secret 11th-hour summit with Boris
DAVID Cameron made an extraordinary appeal to Boris Johnson not to resign on the eve of the Chequers summit, it emerged yesterday. The former prime minister, acting with the blessing of Theresa May, met for drinks with his fellow Old Etonian at a London club just hours before the make-or-break summit was due to begin.
Mr Cameron is said to have appealed to the Foreign Secretary not to risk collapsing the Government by walking out of the Chequers meeting.
One source said he told Mr Johnson that the ‘parliamentary arithmetic’ at Westminster meant there was ‘no choice’ but to accept a deal that kept the UK tied tightly to Brussels. Mr Johnson is said to have been non-committal in his response, with one source saying: ‘He played his cards close to his chest.’ But accounts of the meeting between the two former friends and rivals differed wildly.
One source claimed the two men had agreed that Mrs May’s compromise proposals on Brexit amounted to ‘the worst of all worlds’.
The source said Mr Cameron had wanted to intervene because he felt he had a responsibility as the ‘father of Brexit’ who called the referendum in the first place.
But Craig Oliver, Mr Cameron’s former chief spin doctor, said it was ‘wrong’ to claim that Mr Cameron considered the Government’s proposals to be ‘the worst of all worlds’. Mr Oliver said: ‘He has always understood compromise will be necessary. It’s also wrong to claim he sees himself as “the father of Brexit”. Why would that be true
‘The worst of all worlds’
when he fought it tooth and nail?’ Another source close to Mr Cameron said: ‘David has never agreed with Boris on Brexit. He has always backed the softest possible exit, which Theresa May is pushing now. Boris Johnson wants a hard one.’
The meeting was reminiscent of similar talks between the two men in the run-up to the referendum when the then prime minister was trying to persuade Mr Johnson not to join the Leave campaign.
Mr Johnson’s decision to back Brexit is widely seen as having been pivotal in the result. It led to charges of betrayal against Mr Johnson.
Mr Cameron’s intervention follows talks with Mrs May earlier this month. He is understood to have offered himself as a ‘broker’ to try to persuade the Foreign Secretary to fall into line, as the Prime Minister’s personal relations with Mr Johnson are poor.
Although the two men fell out over Brexit, sources said the pair’s relationship ‘runs deep’.
Mr Cameron, who spent yesterday in the Royal Box at Wimbledon, bri- dles at criticism aimed at him for calling the divisive referendum.
A foul-mouthed attack on Mr Cameron by EastEnders actor Danny Dyer on live TV went viral last week. He told ITV’s Good Evening Britain: ‘So what’s happened to that t*** David Cameron who called it on? How comes he can scuttle off. He called all this on. Where is he?
‘He’s in Europe, in Nice, with his trotters up, yeah, where is the geezer? I think he should be held to account for it. T***.’
Mr Cameron has told friends that a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU had become ‘inevitable’.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, Mr Cameron was caught on camera acknowledging that he was finding Brexit ‘frustrating’. He added: ‘As I keep saying it’s a mistake, not a disaster. It’s turned out less badly than we first thought. But it’s still going to be difficult.’
During the referendum campaign, Mr Cameron repeatedly promised that he would stay on in Downing Street to deliver on the verdict of the British people.
But in the event he announced his resignation just hours after it emerged that voters had rejected his case for staying in the EU.
ITV’s political editor Robert Peston claimed on Twitter that the meeting with Mr Johnson had taken place in the august premises of the Carlton Club and was a ‘long arranged meeting’.
A favourite of Conservatives, the Carlton Club was founded in 1832 and is located in St James’s.
Mr Cameron refused to join the club until 2008, when it changed its rules and agreed to give full rights to female members.
In 2016 Theresa May re-joined it, 15 years after resigning in protest at its stance toward women.
On the eve of the showdown, Brexit-backing ministers held their own private talks in Westminster.
Mr Johnson, David Davis, Michael Gove, Esther McVey, Penny Mordaunt, Andrea Leadsom and Liam Fox met at the Foreign Office. Dr Fox then spent 50 minutes in Downing Street.