Sometime before the 2015 general election, an aeon ago in the history of British politics but less than two years ago in ordinary time, David Cameron told the Financial Times that he wanted to be judged on his success in resolving the two big questions that had overshadowed British politics for nearly a generation. This is how he described them: “One is, does the United Kingdom want to stay together? Yes. Secondly does the United Kingdom want to stay in a reformed European Union? Yes.”
No need to trouble with the score, then.
But where is Cameron, that sunny optimist, on this bleak morning when half his fellow Britons feel as if their country is being severed from Europe like a limb from its body? Where is he today, the day after the Scottish parliament voted in favour of a second referendum? Cameron is famously even tempered in the face of the buffeting of fate. He is a man said by those who know him to be exempt from the dark nights of the soul that keep ordinary folk tossing and turning at night in agonies of self-loathing. But even that David Cameron must have given some thought to the chaos his catastrophic commitment to a referendum on Europe has unleashed. And wondered why he ever thought it was a good idea. Read on and comment » | Anne Perkins | Wednesday, March 29, 2017
