Cameron latest victim of infection from the Tory party’s open wound on Europe
JUST 13 months ago he performed a Westminster miracle, but now he's out of a job
DAVID Cameron was once the fresh-faced Tory leader who promised to stop his party “banging on about Europe”.
But like John Major before him, and Margaret Thatcher before that, the running sore at the heart of the Conservative Party has brought a humiliating end to his political career.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Just 13 months ago he had performed a Westminster miracle, leading the Tories to a shock General Election win and becoming the first sitting PM to increase his majority since 1900.
That was the glorious culmination of Mr Cameron’s husky-riding, hoodie-hugging project to turn the Tories from the “nasty party” into “compassionate Conservatives” the whole nation could unite around.
Eton and Oxford educated but punished for smoking cannabis at school, comfortable with branding himself the “heir to Blair” but a keen fox hunter, he was an election-winning far cry from predecessors Michael Howard and Iain Duncan Smith.
His journey to the top began as a star performer in the Conservative Research Department in the early nineties, from where he was quickly seconded to Downing Street to advise John Major.
As the Tories secured an unexpected election win in 1992, Mr Cameron was rewarded with promotion to become special adviser to Norman Lamont – where he got his first taste of crashing out of Europe, on Black Wednesday.
From there it was on to advise Mr Howard as Home Secretary, before he quit politics to work as corporate affairs chief for media firm Carlton.
But the lure of Westminster drew him back as MP for Witney in 2001, and just four short years later his youthful appeal won the Tory leadership crown ahead of David Davis and Liam Fox.
In 2010 the Tories won the most seats but fell short of an overall majority.
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Mr Cameron, showing the high-stakes gambling instincts which would see him branded the “essay crisis Prime Minister”, made a shock Coalition offer to the Lib Dems to save the economy from ruin.
Nick Clegg’s decision to accept made 43-year-old Mr Cameron the youngest PM since Lord Liverpool in 1812, and delivered Britain’s first coalition government since the Second World War.
He used the cover of the Lib Dems to press ahead with bold reforms at the heart of his modernising project: making gay marriage legal, introducing Free Schools, overhauling Britain’s something-for-nothing benefits culture and – controversially – committing to spend 0.7 per cent of UK national income on foreign aid.
Another gamble to grant Scotland an independence referendum almost backfired spectacularly in 2014, but the UK survived and so did the PM.
A year later he ruthlessly exploited English fears of a Labour-SNP coalition to crush his Lib Dem colleagues and defy all predictions to win a 12-seat Tory majority.
Unshackled from the Lib Dems he painted himself as a great social reformer, the “One Nation” Tory who would improve life chances, stamp out extremism and reform prisons. The new National Living Wage, announced last July, was the entire project encapsulated in one policy.
But from almost the first day he upset the odds to beat David Davis to the Tory leadership in 2005, Europe was always somewhere in the background – and the stick traditional Tories would use to beat him with.
Mr Cameron tried to have it both ways on the issue – Eurosceptic when it suited him, but all-too-willing to sweep it under the carpet at other times.
He promised a “cast-iron guarantee” of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in 2009 but then welched on the deal,.
He was hit by a huge rebellion over holding an In-Out vote in 2011 and then promised one in 2013 to fend off UKIP.
He threatened to lead the UK out of Europe during his Brussels re-negotiation but then campaigned manically for Britain to Remain.
Time and again throughout Mr Cameron’s political career his high-stakes gambling worked.
Yesterday his luck finally and catastrophically ran out.
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