Greg Wright: David Cameron pledged stability but left only chaos behind

HISTORIANS love intellectual parlour games, and David Cameron's demise as Prime Minister will give them much to ponder.
David Cameron is likely to be remembered as the man who lost the EU Referendum vote. (PA).David Cameron is likely to be remembered as the man who lost the EU Referendum vote. (PA).
David Cameron is likely to be remembered as the man who lost the EU Referendum vote. (PA).

When the dust finally settles, they will be drawn to one conclusion – that Cameron’s Tory Government of 2015 to 2016 will rank among the most inept in history.

There’s stiff competition, I’ll grant you. But if you seek Cameron’s monument, look around you.

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The nation is bitterly divided. There’s a potential constitutional crisis looming over the union with Scotland. Industry is facing years of crippling uncertainty until the post Brexit world takes shape.

Record numbers are being forced to rely on food banks, an indictment of a supposedly civilised nation, while there’s been an alarming rise in reports of racist hate crimes.

Hardly a country at peace with itself, or sure of its role in the world. Cameron’s successor Theresa May faces the in-tray from hell. But it didn’t have to be like this. The current mess is of Cameron’s making. To understand the scale of his folly we must rewind to May last year, when Cameron pulled off an unexpected General Election triumph.

Last summer, after years of taking a battering, many business leaders finally had a spring in their step. There was real hope that the UK economy could enjoy a period of sustained growth. I know that many Yorkshire companies were planning to invest in their staff and machinery; creating skilled, long term jobs by forging ties with the European Union, our biggest trading partner. Those plans may have to gather dust for several years, or be abandoned altogether. Fewer jobs will be created. More families could suffer hardship.

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It’s possible, of course, to give Cameron and George Osborne credit for the relatively buoyant mood in mid-2015 because they were the driving forces behind the economic policies of the coalition Government. A more plausible explanation is that, quite simply, the slump had run its course by 2015. Companies had de-leveraged during the seven long years of economic famine, and were better placed to plot expansion when global trends became more favourable.

All business wanted from the new Tory government was a period of stability and certainty.

Cameron failed to deliver either. His terrible, limp response to the flooding which brought misery and potential ruin to thousands of businesses across the North of England showed he was a Prime Minister who could never speak for the whole country. If the floods had hit Oxfordshire or London, his wellies would have beaten a hasty march to the scene and money would have been no object.

His weak leadership of the EU referendum “Remain” campaign revealed that he was no conviction politician. The referendum, which he called, was, in my view, simply a ruse to neutralise the threat Ukip posed to the Tory party.

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During the campaign, Cameron hectored and patronised the electorate. The electorate, in return, gave him the outcome he had dreaded.

The EU referendum campaign was not democracy’s finest hour, with both sides making eye-watering claims on figures that appeared to have been thrown out of some Heath Robinson calculating machine. Clearer, calmer voices, such as the Bank of England’s Mark Carney, never got the prominence they deserved. Cameron led the charge for the Remain side, so this is his failure.

This is pretty grim stuff, but why, you might ask, does Cameron’s Tory government, rank among such hopeless cases as Lord North’s administration from the 1770s, which lost America? Quite simply, he had no plan in place for Brexit. On the morning after the referendum, he stood outside Downing Street and said: “Sorting Brexit isn’t my problem, Guv. Let’s book the removal van.”

His inability – or reluctance – to devise a detailed strategy for Britain’s decoupling from the EU is a catastrophic failure of leadership. As Bank of England governor Mark Carney observed, the Tory leadership candidates had to draw up a “comprehensive strategy for engaging with the EU and the rest of the world – including clarifying the UK’s future trading arrangements”

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In other words, Theresa May’s Government must re-think the UK’s economic policy almost from scratch, owing to Cameron’s incompetence. If, as seems possible, the UK economy suffers through Cameron’s failure to have a Brexit plan, then Ms May will start negotiations with the EU from a weakened position.

That’s very bad news for all of us, but it will be a particularly bitter blow for businesses who bought into the dream of an export-led recovery. Cameron has left the UK adrift in choppy economic waters. His place in history is assured, but for all the wrong reasons. His terrible legacy will cloud the world’s view of our country for decades.

Greg Wright is the deputy business editor of The Yorkshire Post