What on earth do the Cameroons have to be angry about?

The former Prime Minister David Cameron (how strange it still feels to write those words) is pictured in an illustration on the front of the latest edition of the New Statesman mowing a vast lawn while humming a tune. One must hope that his summer involves nothing so arduous. After years of public service Cameron should be sitting looking at a large lawn, or at a decent beach. A good man deserves a break.

That said, it is difficult to sympathise with the Cameroon ultra-loyalists holed up in their Notting Hill redoubt, or on a friend’s yacht off Ibiza, who seem to be absolutely furious about what was done to their hero.

The ex-PM’s sister-in-law, Emily Sheffield, the deputy editor of Vogue, has ‎written for the latest edition of The Spectator, fulminating about Cameron’s removal and the activities of the scoundrels wot done it. Sheffield is particularly annoyed by something “surprising” said by Sarah Vine, wife of Michael Gove, at‎ Chequers three years ago.‎ The rest of us must await the assorted memoirs and blood on the walls accounts of implosion of the Cameron project to find out the precise details of who said what and when. Might some people involved have been keeping diaries? No…

But it was Sheffield’s comment about Theresa May that puzzled me. “They will come for you, I am afraid, one day Prime Minister, like they did for Thatcher, Blair and Brown.”

The “they” that came for ‎David Cameron were the British voters. That is their right. We live in a democracy and Cameron rolled the dice and lost, just as when Brown became PM and it became apparent he wasn’t great at it and the voters grasped this key point. In the case of Thatcher, it was the cabinet and Tory MPs who acted only in response to the fear that “they” (the voters) had had enough. In the case of Blair, the “they” were the Brownites, who wanted power and thought they would be more popular with the voters than the Blairites. Alas…

Emily Sheffield’s brother-in-law David Cameron can have no complaints. He went into the referendum with his eyes open, hoping to secure his legacy as the man who put the Tory Party back in power, kept the UK together and defeated Euroscepticism. Deploying the full machinery of the British state, Cameron chose to go ahead with a referendum without having secured sufficient concessions from the EU, when he could have delayed until next year and threatened to advocate Leave himself in the interim. Going early was the electoral equivalent of the star footballer playing in the World Cup final penalty shoot-out who botches his run up, slips and skies the ball into the stand. Cameron lost and then resigned, quite sensibly.

‎Of course others who might be termed “they” (meaning Michael Gove and Sarah Vine) split from the Camerons. Ultimately, so what? That’s life. Gove was always for leaving the EU if the opportunity arose. If other senior Cameroons didn’t believe this, or chose not to listen, thinking Gove would meekly do as they want rather than follow his conscience, it illustrates once again a weakness that often afflicts Prime Ministers who forget that others have their own aspirations and lives. Cameron had to drop plenty of ministers along the way. As it must be, lots of people were fired or overlooked as the Cameron project advanced. Many others – advisers and MPs – subsumed their careers in Cameron’s career. Supporters complaining now about insufficient loyalty is a bit rich after he had such a decent run.

As for the complaints ‎that one hears from others that insufficient credit is being accorded to the achievements of the Cameron government, the only polite response can be: come off it, get over yourselves! Anyone who has ever moved on from a job, or been fired, or lost out for a promotion, feels that flicker of remorse and hopes that their efforts will one day be recognised properly. This is the adult equivalent of the tearful, childhood declaration: “They’ll miss me when I’m gone. Then they’ll be sorry. Wait and see.”

Politicians, like the rest us, should avoid succumbing to such feelings if at all possible. It is a waste of precious time and energy. Life goes on. We are all dust in the end. David Cameron got to be leader of the Tory party for eleven years and Prime Minister for six years, and historians will be writing about him for decades. Not bad.

Cameron himself will surely ‎see it this way in time. His supporters should – what’s the Cameroon word? – chillax.