Come back Cameron – (almost) all is forgiven
Just over a year ago I wrote for Reaction that David Cameron should be recalled to frontline politics. I received no note of appreciation from Mr Cameron for sticking my neck out in this way, no indication of gratitude from his office. And if this morning’s report was to be believed, Cameron had come round to my point of view. Sources close to the former PM have since briefed that he is not in fact interested in a return to frontline politics.
But there are plenty of good reasons why he should reverse his decision. In many ways Mr Cameron is the Conservative party’s lost leader, which is odd when you think about it because he led the party for eleven years and served as Prime Minister for six years. Yet still the sense of lost opportunity and wasted talent persists.
Writing about Mr Cameron is a sensitive thing to do. Many Conservative MPs miss him and pine for the days of his charismatic leadership. He was the leader that brought the party back into government after 13 years and four leaders in the wilderness. Yet the 2010 General Election ended up in a less than dazzling scramble into Downing Street in coalition with a Liberal Democrat party that had actually lost parliamentary seats. A stable five years of government followed and then, finally, a clear General Election win in 2015 – still amazingly only three years ago. His outright victory was the first in twenty three years, since the last clear Conservative General Election victory under John Major in 1992. Then the Brexit referendum and resignation.
Resigning as Prime Minister in 2016 was right and it was inevitable. As Prime Minister he had invited the nation to make a decision, he had recommended a course of action and the people chose to reject his advice. His decision to resign carried in it a great deal of integrity. His decision to resign as an MP however, which was not his original course of action, was a mistake. It was bad for the party, Parliament, the government and for himself. Since leaving we have heard little of him.
The fact is that everything else in David Cameron’s political career is overshadowed by the result of the referendum. It does not matter how he handled the economy (well), what his social reforms were (mixed), the creation of the National Citizen Service (good), what we did in Libya (very debatable), or anything else that he did or championed, David Cameron is the Prime Minister who called and lost the referendum and accidentally, according to his own policy preference, changed the course of modern British history. It is to this fact that he needs to face up, squarely and head on if he is ever to return to frontline politics, which must in reality be a doubtful proposition, or if he is ever to face up to the one great event of his premiership, and here former President Barack Obama provides a good role model for our former Prime Minister.
Mr Cameron needs to get back out on the stump. He needs to go and canvass, deliver leaflets, make speeches to constituency parties, help Theresa May and the government. In other words, he needs to get stuck in, show he still has the appetite and the temperament for politics. This time round he can do it without the burden of ambition. He can do it for the value of simply doing it, but this time he brings what he lacked the first time round – experience and the wisdom that comes with it. He must learn to talk about the referendum in a way that admits, by his own policy standards, he messed up, but that he can now move on. He must show that he can support a government line he doesn’t always personally agree with. This is the discipline of a practising frontline politician. A former Prime Minister, as all the other former living Prime Ministers are currently demonstrating, can indulge themselves to their heart’s content.
For David Cameron a return to frontline politics may or may not be wise, although there are many who would like to see it. What is certainly the case is that he should put writing this book to one side because its far too early for memoirs. Get stuck in; get back to the fray.