Cameron's memoirs are not going to be well received in Downing Street. As expected, The Sunday Times serialisation focuses on his relationship with Johnson and Gove. They are cast in a very bad light as mendacious, untrustworthy and serially disloyal. In other words, very accurately. Gove in particular will be stung because he and Cameron were once close friends.
Johnson is once again shown as a man far more concerned about his own career than the future of the nation and today he is in The Mail on Sunday telling us the UK will break free of the EU 'manacles' like the Incredible Hulk. Some overseas newspapers think he is actually comparing himself to Lou Ferrigno like this one from Canada. Johnson comes across as the geek behind the counter of the comic book shop in The Simpsons rather than the prime minister.
Cameron confirms what we all knew, that in 2016 Johnson gambled on Brexit simply as a vehicle for furthering his own career, thinking the leave side would lose, ending the eurosceptic cause for a generation but putting him in prime position with the party faithful. Clever thinking, eh? Unfortunately, it all went wrong
"The former prime minister says Johnson backed leave despite being 'certain the Brexit side would lose' — and despite being promised the post of defence secretary — because his concerns about sovereignty were 'secondary to another concern for Boris: what was the best outcome for him?'
Cameron says Johnson wanted to 'become the darling of the party' and 'didn’t want to risk allowing someone else with a high profile — Michael Gove in particular — to win that crown'. “The conclusion I am left with is that he risked an outcome he didn’t believe in because it would help his political career.”
Cameron says Johnson wanted to 'become the darling of the party' and 'didn’t want to risk allowing someone else with a high profile — Michael Gove in particular — to win that crown'. “The conclusion I am left with is that he risked an outcome he didn’t believe in because it would help his political career.”
I can see how Johnson might have calculated that a life-long eurosceptic like Gove could usurp him. It demonstrates how insane the ambition eating away inside Johnson really was, that he was prepared to gamble with a nation's entire future to take him to the top of the greasy pole.
You would have thought he would be wary of complex and devious strategies after that but no, he joined forces with Dominic Cummings and they are now in the middle of another strategy going disastrously wrong. When will he learn?
What Cameron's book re-emphasises for me is the wider problem the Tories will have in getting a majority at the next election. If nothing else, Cameron was thought to have changed the public perception of the party to a softer, more liberal one, away from the wild extremists like Duncan-Smith et al. In reality the party used him as a latex mask. Cameron was Bruce Banner to the Tory party's Hulk - to keep up Johnson's own analogy.
The Conservative party is perhaps even more right wing and swivel eyed now than it was before Cameron, especially with the new intake of UKIPPERS encouraged by Aaron Banks. The nasty party is back with a vengeance and has burst out into the open. If anyone other than Corbyn was leader, the Labour party would now be out of sight.
As I have pointed out before, the Conservatives have won just one election (in 2015) and by a narrow margin, out of the six that have taken place since 1992. That is not a good record and they will need another Cameron sooner or later. It takes a very long time to change a party's image, even if there was an obvious candidate waiting to take over. Unfortunately, the moderates have all either jumped ship or been sacked.
Sam Gyimah (HERE) was the latest to quit the party, joining the LibDems at the start of their annual conference yesterday. He was seen as a rising star with a great back-story and centre right views - a typical one-nation Tory.
What we are surely seeing is the death rattle for the Conservative party.
