What's Cameron's game?

David Cameron has quit as an MP. When Tony Blair finally went, the applause in the Commons made no real difference to the obvious fact that his legacy, ultimately, would be consumed by the history of the war in Iraq and the madness that surrounded it, before and after. That has become increasingly true as recollections of his achievements, many substantial, all recede into recent history and grow pale by comparison with that war.

Cameron, on the other hand, was much less of a colossus. My view is that he has been an important figure in our recent political history, playing an interesting and eventually successful game in order to purge the Tories of their recent record of abject failure and return them to the position they now occupy, a party of government with further majorities in sight. He has reunited the Conservative Party with electoral success. That is important, because his three immediate predecessors all proved unable to penetrate the miasma of stupidity that infected the top layers of the party for ten years after the destruction of John Major.

He is also important because he set a tone. Yes, the Big Society was quietly laid to rest in 2013 or so; yes, some of the successful Tory policies that propelled them to victory were in fact Liberal Democrat ones painted blue (and, in the case of tuition fees, one of their most objectionable policies was simply painted yellow and hung like a stone around the neck of his deputy prime minister). And yes, there was a marked tack to the right in the later years of his premiership, not surprisingly given the cutting of the Liberal Democrat brakes.

But Cameron did show that Conservative solutions can be at least tolerable again, and that potent change meant their return to the other side of the Commons was possible.

There is equal marriage, often cited (even by Jeremy Corbyn on Cameron's departure from office) as a change for which we should all be grateful to him. (We may wonder, of course, whether this would have proceeded as smoothly had Cameron never been shacked to Clegg). There could have been Universal Credit, if Iain Duncan Smith had not proved unequal to the task of its completion. There is, undoubtedly, the avoidance of complete national disaster in the economic mess that engulfed us all during the last Parliament, whether or not you feel that the extent of austerity was justifiable or the targets, now abandoned, were necessary to get us through. The fact is that we didn't suffer as much as we could have done.

And then Brexit.

And then he quit, and we have Theresa May, his own Home Secretary, who has proved a stable pair of hands and a calming influence - as she clearly intends to be, with her regular, stabilising incantations of "Brexit means Brexit". The wounds are open, and the only reason the party is not bleeding to death just yet is that both sides of the debate feel they have a chance of victory. For Remainers, the challenge is to present Brexit as unpalatable and not, ultimately, what the electorate voted for; for Leavers, it's to show us that any Brexit is better than remaining in the Brussels clink, stymied and emasculated and apparently not in control.

It is hard to see at this point that David Cameron's resignation can do anything other than free the wings of his party up to prepare for a bloody civil war to cap anything he previously ended, and - certainly a sadder thought - overshadow his legacy of re-centring the Tories, injecting a little warmth and reason into their party leadership after the Howard and Duncan Smith years, his avoidance of economic disaster, and, most regrettable of all, his social progressivism, such as it was.

The price of Blair's failings - so many lives - should never have been paid. Cameron's disasters may not be in the same league in severity, but we have not yet seen the start, let alone the end, of the blighting of lives by all the consequences of the Brexit vote - from the deprivation of European citizenship all the way up to the potentially staggering economic impact. People will suffer. And, sadly, the blame must fall in great part on Cameron and his failed gamble.

The Boris Factor: 3

In which we draw lessons about Boris Johnson from his book about Winston Churchill, The Boris Factor. It's a good read about a great man, but it's as interesting for what it says about what Boris sees and values, as for what it says about Churchill, that otherwise little-known figure from British history.

"They knew that throughout the amazing snakes-and-ladders of his life he had followed the pattern of [his father] Randolph not just in his ducal disdain for party or his Homeric desire for glory but in his willingness to back himself and his ideas - to take risks that no one else would take. In peacetime, such behaviour can be disastrous."

Yes, Boris. So we have discovered.

"But you can't win a war without taking risks, and you won't take risks unless you are brave. That, finally, was the quality that people sensed in Churchill; that was why some people yearned for him in 1940, in spite of all the sneering of the Tory establishment and the appeasers. His whole career so far had been a testament to that primordial virtue - the virtue, as he pointed out himself, that makes possible all the others."

Right. So we're going to deduce from your little flurry of bungles over Brexit that you're fundamentally brave. And I suppose, unfettered by the consensus and nauseating community of the EU we might end up facing a war, or at least a dire threat against our lonely little nation - so perhaps these are the circumstances in which we will recall the strength of that brave old crackpot. Good old Boris. Yes, Theresa May's not good enough to get us through this crisis. We need Boris! Boris!

What was that about a primordial virtue?

"Of the immense physical and moral courage of Churchill there can be no doubt."

Ah.

Boris, you may be pushing it a bit far, old boy.

Brexit: time to give up?

The prime minister's statement at the start of the Chequers cabinet talks today certainly seems to make it clear that Brexit cometh. "We must continue to be very clear that “Brexit means Brexit”,", she says:

"...that we’re going to make a success of it. That means there’s no second referendum; no attempts to sort of stay in the EU by the back door; that we’re actually going to deliver on this."

Oh, dear. Have we Remainers who hope for sanity to prevail come to the end of the road? When you add in the line at the end of the BBC's coverage of this story - that Number 10 has said Parliament won't be consulted before the activation of Article 50 - it may be time to decide between angry, sad or puking emoticons ready for use when the miserable day finally arrives.

After all, the future that Theresa May is hinting at is one where the government produces a surprisingly positive vision of Brexit, everybody starts to think it might be OK, and she just pings off an email titled "Re: thanks for everything" to Jean-Claude Juncker. Easy as pie.

Now, we can speculate (and we probably will) about Theresa May's real convictions on Europe and her motives in office. (For my part I think she's decided that clarity and firmness are for the best, and that she is taking the bull by the horns rather than allowing herself to become bogged down in a messy argument over Europe like five or six of her immediate predecessors).

But whatever we think she's up to, whether she really wants out or whether she does have a game plan to keep us in, we all have to dance to her tune. And she has made it plain that the constitutional route to salvation may not be open to us. She has to act, either through conviction or convenience, like the Brexit prime minister. She cannot be seen to be soft. She clearly does not feel that going back to Parliament is defensible - perhaps because it will enrage the frothing Leavers and terminate her ministry. She will therefore press ahead when the moment comes. We should not ignore the constitutional implications of this potential route, by any means; but what May is telling us is that we cannot rely on a constitutional hiccup to save us from Brexit.

Constitutional tools are not available to us, then. But political tools remain. May proposed to act in a way consistent with her chosen identity as a modern Iron Lady: firm, accepting of the Brexit "verdict", clear about her power. But she has yet put in place pauses and delays, which allow the debate to develop and the players to build their cause. To build a Remain cause now around the hope of constitutional salvation seems a closed road. There's not even much point arguing about whether or not such a method, of relying on constitutional diddling based on the current situation - the "referendums are advisory, dontcherknow" approach - would ever be legitimate. What we have to do is shift the sands. The avenue open to us - the avenue that Mrs May is leaving open to us, deliberately or not - is political. We may find help from the Supreme Court or the House of Lords, but unless there is real, public anger with the passage of Brexit, a feeling that the alternative we have got is indeed worse than what anybody wanted, and a proper understanding that this is madness--or at least, enough persuasion that EU membership is the better option--then nothing will stand.

We have to stop theorising, diddling, dithering, hoping and regretting. We have to start persuading. Now.