YP Comment: Worse than Eden?

LIKE footbALL's proverbial game of two halves, the same principle appears to apply to David Cameron after University of Leeds academics compared his premiership to each of his post-war predecessors. Given insufficient credit for presiding over Britain's first peacetime coalition, Mr Cameron's record since 2015 is then judged to be inferior to Sir Anthony Eden's handling of Suez.

Some perspective is required. Mr Cameron’s coalition with the Lib Dems and Nick Clegg did last five years and it did stabilise the country after Tony Blair and Gordon Brown led the UK from boom to bust, not least because of their dysfunctional relationship.

Though targets on deficit reduction and immigration were missed, Messrs Cameron and Clegg deserve more credit for attempting to sort out the mess that they inherited from Labour.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

As for Brexit, only time will tell whether the June 23 EU referendum vote was a liberating moment in UK economic history or the most disastrous political miscalculation since the war, a view held by Tory grandee Ken Clarke.

What is certain is that Mr Cameron was a poor negotiator – he asked for little and received even less from his EU counterparts – and he allowed the historic June 23 vote to become, for some, more of a referendum on the trustworthiness of politicians per se rather than the precise terms of Britain’s future relationship with Europe. As for Theresa May, it’s difficult to draw lessons from this exercise because no previous leader has had to implement Brexit. What she is duty-bound to do, however, is put the national interest first. If she does, history is likely to be kinder to her than Mr Cameron and others.