Cameron and Brexit — an unparalleled failure of a Prime Minister and an unprecedented blunder of policy

There has been no shortage of articles over the last 48 hours describing David Cameron’s decision to hold a referendum on our membership of the EU as “the worst blunder by a Prime Minister since [Iraq/Suez/whatever]”. Any such statement is incorrect from the word “since” onward.

There are three aspects to Cameron’s miscalculation, that together make it an unprecedented blunder. I cannot identify any error of the same magnitude by any previous PM that contained the same three elements.

• Firstly, it was a policy failure of truly monumental consequences: no rational consideration of the cold policy case would lead one to conclude in favour of Brexit; partly because of the direct impact of forsaking our relationship with the EU, and partly because of the wider constitutional consequences for the United Kingdom
• Secondly, it was a political miscalculation so massive as to end the career of a Prime Minister: Cameron did not explicitly state it in these terms, but he has resigned because the electorate rejected his advice, given as Prime Minister, and could not possibly stay in office after that
• Thirdly, it was totally unforced: there was no external driver or policy imperative to hold a referendum, and it’s unclear even whether the short-term political case for doing it was very clear-cut at the time.

What are the other contenders for epoch-defining disasters? Suez is getting mentioned, but doesn’t tick all three boxes. For one thing, it wasn’t as big a policy blunder as it is sometimes painted: it didn’t bring about the end of empire, but rather made it plain that the empire had been existing with the permission of the Americans ever since Churchill asset-stripped it to win the war. The escapade did fail to achieve its immediate aims though, and was excruciatingly embarrassing for the country. Ultimately it wasn’t totally unforced, as there was an external issue to address. And although it sort-of prompted Eden to resign over his conduct, he did it under cover of some genuine ill health; it did not directly and immediately bring him down as Brexit has for Cameron. So Suez isn’t in the same league as Brexit.

OK, how about Iraq? I’ve been grumbling for years that describing Iraq as the “biggest foreign policy blunder since Suez” massively understates the magnitude of Blair’s mistake with Iraq. But it still doesn’t count under the three elements that have made Cameron’s error so bad. On the political side, Iraq did not bring down a PM: it did him a lot of damage, but Blair ultimately left in a manner that he was more or less able to control, and did not resign over any specific issue; his reputation has been shredded because of it, but it didn’t directly end his political career. It does fit the other two criteria, though: it was a disastrous policy error, and unforced. Its consequences were grave and are still unfolding; it has destabilised the Middle East catastrophically, and made the UK hesitant to act decisively on the world stage in response to those and other events. But compared to the self-inflicted damage of Brexit (massive deterioration in the circumstances of millions, the turbocharging of a rise in far right politics and possibly violence, the UK gone, the EU itself possibly undermined, and heaven-only-knows-what consequences for the whole continent), even these consequences look a bit fleeting (though as I type I’m disagreeing with myself a bit — Brexit isn’t going to cause deaths on the same scale, after all).

There’s a third contender, although one hesitates to make reference to the Nazis at the moment, even implicitly. But the failure of the policy of appeasing Hitler (and others) undeniably had catastrophic consequences for millions — it doesn’t get more catastrophic than war. Chamberlain sort-of had to resign because of it; but more properly, he went because his party lost confidence in his ability to address the consequences of the failure, rather than because of the initial error. But it was by no means self-inflicted: there was an external aggressor. It’s worth reflecting, however, that there was a tide of populist sentiment in favour of it (including, at its height, the King disgracefully forsaking impartiality and inviting Chamberlain onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace to take the applause of the crowd, following his apparently successful negotiation with Hitler); after Hitler occupied the rest of Czechosolovakia anyway the following March, the pro-appeasement tide of public opinion abruptly reversed — will Brexiteers (and presumably, by extension, the government of Cameron’s successor) suffer a similar fate? If so, who will pick up the pieces?

None of the other possible contenders even come close. One might consider the repeal of the Corn Laws, but Peel achieved his policy objective and it was probably a sound one — it was only on the political front that he suffered. Prime Ministers have resigned on plenty of occasions because of losing a parliamentary vote — indeed, before the 20th century it was very common — and some have even done it after failing to get their way over totemic issues: Gladstone over Home Rule; Baldwin over tariffs. But it wasn’t a career-ender (usually — Gladstone and Baldwin both returned as PM, albeit Gladstone’s retirement was prompted by the same issue subsequently), and the issue was never quite of this magnitude. In terms of political calculation, Balfour’s resignation in late 1905, on the assumption that the Liberals would prove themselves so inept in office as a minority government that the electorate would gladly put the Tories back in, was a comparable blunder to Cameron’s (Campbell-Bannerman led the Liberals to their 1906 landslide), and was certainly unforced; but it didn’t constitute a policy disaster for the nation. Beyond that, though… One might identify policies that haven’t panned out well, but no PM brought down by a catastrophic policy failure that didn’t have to happen.

Let’s consider Cameron’s error itself. It was a political calculation to try to spike UKIP’s guns, and thereby to reassert control over fractious Conservative backbenches (he should have reckoned that if Eurosceptics are given an inch, they’ll take a mile). He gambled that he’d never have to honour it, and was wrong. Indeed, without the Lib Dems to save him from having to pander to his party’s own right wing he lasted barely more than a year in office. In policy terms, the consequences are on a scale that is barely comprehensible. The economic consequences for millions are enough on their own to clarify this as an unprecedented blunder (short of ending up at war); the destruction of the United Kingdom seems imminent (Scotland independent, NI continuing as a devolved province… but of the Republic?); the destruction of the EU doesn’t seem a wholly fanciful idea; and there seems to be an unleashing of overt racism into British politics, maybe even a new era of political violence (not solely down to the referendum, but it surely magnified and accelerated it). It’s easy to list, but hard to contemplate.

Cameron is often spoken of as a lucky politician: in his opponents (Brown, Miliband, Corbyn); in his timing (leading while Labour faltered); and in his gambits (the Coalition held, Scotland voted to stay). If he deserves credit, with Osborne, for one political move, it’s successfully selling the lie of the deficit as a crisis and austerity as a solution, to devastating political effect, though even then it clearly helped him that Labour had hit such problems with perception around immigration and benefits. So even when he was riding high, it’s debatable how much of his success he really engineered. But his failure was designed and constructed by himself — when facing a difficult situation, he made an almost unimaginably bad choice. His critics are right to home in on three things in particular:

• His focus on tactics, not strategy; let’s not forget the weakness of the deal he negotiated and then tried to parade as a major set of concessions, to immediate derision
• A presumption that it would come good; he didn’t realise it would be an ‘away match’ for him, with a hostile press and a long-standing climate of Euroscepticism stoked by his own party, its allies and himself over decades
• A recklessness with his country; he claims to love it and want to preserve it, but he has done it a greater disservice than any Prime Minister in history.

It is not an exaggeration to say that David Cameron is the most spectacular failure of a Prime Minister this country has ever seen.