Cameron lashes out at Gove and Johnson
On the Leavers They behaved appallingly On the PM He has used sharp practices On Brexit Don’t rule out 2nd referendum
DAVID CAMERON has accused Boris Johnson and Michael Gove of having “left the truth at home” over Brexit as he said they behaved “appallingly” during the EU referendum campaign.
In an excoriating attack, Mr Cameron lambasted his former friends and colleagues over the claims, depicted on their campaign bus, that £350million a week was going to Brussels.
Casting doubt on Mr Johnson’s promise of getting Britain out of the EU on Oct 31 with or without a deal, Mr Cameron also suggested a second referendum might now be necessary, saying: “I don’t think you can rule it out because we’re stuck.”
In his long-awaited memoir, which is published next week, and in an interview with The Times, Mr Cameron said his failure to keep Britain in the EU, which led to his resignation, left him “hugely depressed” and he also opened up about his drug-taking past and the ups and downs of his coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
He accused Mr Johnson of “sharp practices” in proroguing Parliament and savaged his decision to expel rebel Tories. He called Mr Gove “mendacious”.
The former Tory leader also attacked Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, saying of her blue-on-blue attacks in the referendum campaign: “I thought there were places Conservatives wouldn’t go against each other. And they did.” Mr Cameron’s Downing Street diary,
For the Record, will be published next week, just days ahead of what is likely to be the most divisive Conservative Party conference in decades.
Mr Johnson insisted yesterday that “absolutely nothing” his No10 predecessor said “will diminish the affection and respect in which I hold him”. In an effort to calm troubled waters, he added: “I think he has a very distinguished record and a legacy to be proud of.”
Mr Cameron, however, was in no mood for compromise in an interview
conducted to publicise the book, saying Mr Johnson lied during the referendum campaign and refusing to say he trusted him as premier.
He said the Vote Leave campaign misled voters over the claim that the UK sent £350 million per week to the EU, adding: “I think they left the truth at home.” He also accused Mr Johnson and Mr Gove of behaving “appallingly” during the referendum campaign, and claimed Mr Johnson only campaigned for Leave to boost his own career.
“Boris had never argued for leaving the EU, right?” he said. “Michael was a very strong Eurosceptic but someone whom I’d known as this liberal, compassionate, rational Conservative ended up making arguments about Turkey [ joining the EU] and being swamped and what have you.
“They were trashing the government of which they were a part, effectively. It was ridiculous.”
He disclosed that he tried to persuade Mr Johnson to back the Remain campaign by offering him a “top five” Cabinet job, hinting it was defence secretary.
On the day Mr Cameron resigned, Mr Johnson sent him a text message apologising for not being “in touch”. The former prime minister said he could not think what to say in reply.
Of Mr Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament and expel rebel MPS, Mr Cameron said: “Taking the whip from hard-working Conservative MPS and sharp practices using prorogation of Parliament have rebounded.
“I didn’t support either of those things. Neither do I think a no-deal Brexit is a good idea.”
Asked twice if he trusted the Prime Minister, Mr Cameron was reluctant or unable to answer, saying only: “He’s got a very clear strategy and plan. It’s not the approach I would have taken, but I want him to succeed.”
But it was Mr Gove, whom he counted as a close personal friend, for whom he reserved the greatest insults.
He said that when Mr Gove resisted being moved from education secretary to chief whip in 2014 he texted him to say: “You are either a team player or a w----r.”
He also claimed Mr Gove promised him that he would not play a leading part in the Leave campaign, only to go back on his word, and added that they had hardly spoken since.
Describing the current wrangling over Brexit as “painful to watch”, he said that losing the referendum and his job left him “hugely depressed”.
He had praise for his successor, Theresa May, with her “phenomenal” work rate and “ethos of public service” but suggested her Brexit “red lines” left her trapped and unable to reach a deal.
He said he had frequently texted her to sympathise over the “maddening” repeated rejections of her deal, adding: “There’s an argument that Brexit is just impossible to deliver.”
Mr Cameron’s book will be published by Harpercollins on Sept 19 and he will also feature in a two-part BBC documentary, The Cameron Years, that begins on the same day.
He was so confident about securing the EU referendum for Remain that he boasted to fellow European leaders that he was a “lucky” prime minister who knew “how to win”. Instead, the shock of losing the vote, and his job as prime minister, caused David Cameron to become “hugely depressed”, he has disclosed, in a fascinating account of how and why he inadvertently set Britain on course for Brexit.
Having gambled everything – and lost – on his conviction that the UK would choose to stay in the EU, Mr
Cameron admits he has trouble sleeping at night, but insists the referendum was “inevitable”.
“I think about this every day,” he said in an interview with The Times to publicise his memoir, For The Record. “Every single day I think about it, the referendum and the fact that we lost and the consequences and the things that could have been done differently, and I worry desperately about what is going to happen next.”
Although the majority of the country backs Brexit, Mr Cameron believes it is a backward step, and he is tormented by the consequences of the events he set in motion, to the extent that it has affected his health.
He was “hugely depressed about it” when the Leave campaign, headed by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, emerged victorious.
Asked if he was clinically depressed, he replied that he was not “on medication”.
He is often shouted at in the street, saying: “People come up and say all sorts of things. I’ve had some robust exchanges… I totally recognise the uncertainty has been painful and difficult. It’s been difficult for all sorts of people in all sorts of walks of life.” Asked whether he has trouble sleeping, he said: “I worry about it a lot.”
Despite losing the referendum after campaigning for Remain, despite losing his job, and despite the current Brexit crisis facing Mr Johnson, Mr
‘The argument about control resonated and when you asked “what is it we’re going to control?” it was immigration’
Cameron has no time for regrets, as he says he could not have done anything differently even if he had the ability to turn back the clock.
“As I say, when I think through all the things I thought and all the arguments I had with colleagues and myself, I still come to the same conclusion: that we were going to have a referendum.”
He acknowledges that “some people will never forgive me for holding a referendum. Others for holding it and losing it”, but adds: “There are, of course, all those people who wanted a referendum and wanted to leave who are glad that a promise was made and a promise was kept.”
He said he had tried to explain in his book “why I felt this was inevitable”.
He says: “This issue needed to be addressed and I thought a referendum was coming, so better to try to get some reforms we needed and have a referendum. But I accept that, you know, that effort failed. I do understand some people are very angry because they didn’t want to leave the EU. Neither did I.”
The decision caused huge rifts with his closest friends and colleagues that have never healed – his loyal chancellor George Osborne still refers to “you and your f---ing referendum”, and he has barely spoken to Mr Gove or Mr Johnson since.
Addressing whether he feels guilt over his decision to call a referendum he explains it was not something he took lightly.
“I get very frustrated when I read – which I do frequently – that a referendum was held because of the results of the 2014 European election [when Ukip emerged as a genuine threat to the Tories]. It’s simply not
‘There were lots of people who, as far as I knew, had never expressed the view of wanting to leave the EU and then suddenly decided they absolutely did want to. I didn’t foresee that’
true. The referendum was announced a year beforehand and I thought about it more than any other decision I took… but it seemed to me that there was a genuine problem between Britain and the EU with the eurozone crisis and the development of the euro that needed fixing.
“There was also – I don’t deny it for a second – a huge political pressure to have a referendum, partly because we’d had treaty after treaty and promise after promise, and this issue was not going to go away.”
Mr Cameron traces the origins of the referendum back to 2011, when Britain vetoed a change to the EU treaty designed to help solve a crisis in the eurozone.
Instead of respecting Britain’s right of veto, the EU carried on regardless without the UK in the discussions.
Mr Cameron tried to avoid the need for a referendum by trying to recast Britain’s relationship with the EU, but his efforts fell flat.
He said he needed the threat of a referendum to have any chance of success in negotiating with Brussels because “politicians couldn’t keep saying ‘we’ll have a referendum at some stage but not now’,” but he accepts that “one of my biggest mistakes” was allowing expectations of what was possible to “get far too high”.
As a result, his new deal – which exempted Britain from the EU’S “ever closer union” mantra and limited benefit payments to EU migrants – was “dumped” on.
Having failed to win backing for his tweaked arrangement with the EU, Mr Cameron had no choice but to call the referendum he had promised.
He was guilty of hubris before the vote, telling European politicians, “I
am a lucky man, I know how to win,” according to one Czech former minister, forcing him to make humiliating apologies to world leaders when Britain voted to leave.
The morning after the referendum he rang President Obama and leaders of the 27 other EU countries to tell them: “I am sorry.” With the benefit of hindsight, he now acknowledges that he misjudged the mood of the Tory party and the country, saying: “Something I got wrong was that the latent Leaver gene in the Conservatives was much stronger [than I thought]. There were lots of people – councillors, Conservative members, Conservative newspapers, friends – who, as far as I knew, had never expressed the view of wanting to leave the EU and then suddenly decided they absolutely did want to. I didn’t foresee that.”
He also accepts that Dominic Cummings, the Vote Leave campaign guru who is now Boris Johnson’s senior strategist in Number 10, managed to reach people who had never voted before, confounding the polls that had consistently said Remain would win.
“It’s true that the reason, or one of the reasons, the opinion polls got it wrong was that… this time non-voters voted,” he said.
Explaining why the Remain campaign failed, he says: “In the end we ended up with very strong technical and economic arguments and the opposition had a very powerful emotional argument.
“I think the issue of immigration plus that emotional argument was a winning combination for them. The argument about control, it resonated with people, and when you asked them ‘well, what is it that we’re going to control?’, it was this issue of immigration.”
He said he tried to make the argument that the EU had helped to bring together countries that had previously fought each other in wars, but “it just didn’t work” and as the referendum campaign wore on “I just felt more and more bogged down”. “It turned into this terrible Tory psychodrama and I couldn’t seem to get through. What Boris and Michael Gove were doing was more exciting than the issues I was trying to get across. I felt like I was in a sort of quagmire by the end.”
For him, the referendum campaign is remembered as much for personal betrayal as personal failure.
Mr Gove, in particular, was one of his closest friends before the campaign; their children went to the same school. Mr Gove promised he would not play a leading role in the Leave campaign, only to break his word, and their friendship.
In contrast to his sense of betrayal at Mr Gove, he believes Mr Johnson’s decision to back the Leave campaign, was more about personal ambition. “I think he was genuinely torn, but I came to the conclusion in the end that it was too tempting not to run that campaign and go that way.”
Mr Cameron claims that “Boris thought he was going to lose” in the referendum and that he said “Brexit will be crushed”, but believed that he had a better chance of eventually being chosen as Tory leader if he showed his Eurosceptic credentials.
To try to persuade him to back Remain, Mr Cameron offered him a “top five” Cabinet job, such as defence secretary, but Mr Johnson declined. He is aware that many people think that, after he lost the referendum and announced his resignation, “I just disappeared and swanned off.”
But he insists he expected to spend far more time as prime minister preparing the country for Article 50 while a leadership contest played out, only for Tory MPS to choose Theresa May within days, ending his own premiership.
“I thought I would be in Downing Street for a three- to four-month period,” he said. “Helping with the transition to a new prime minister, and then suddenly all that collapsed and I was out within a matter of days. I totally understand how that impression caught on.”
Part of the reason the public thought Mr Cameron was nonchalant about losing the referendum and his job was that he was recorded humming cheerily as he went back inside Number 10 following his dramatic resignation announcement in June 2016.
He explains: “That was simply because I thought ‘the door’s not going to open’ and I was trying to calm myself down because there were moments where I walked back to the door and it didn’t open.”
Far from being cheerful, he says: “I wasn’t happy to leave. I was miserable about giving up the job I loved and working for the country I loved.”
With Boris Johnson talking up the prospects of a Brexit deal, Mr Cameron says: “I think we can get to a situation where we leave but we are friends, neighbours and partners.
“We can get there, but I would love to fast-forward to that moment, because it’s painful for the country and it’s painful to watch.”