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.