It was so perfect that he walked off humming.
David Cameron’s second resignation announcement, on timing, set the stage for Theresa May to take over as Prime Minister. He appeared happy; it was nice to hear the man hum, far nicer than it had been seeing his wonderful, kind and clever wife, Samantha Cameron, a top fashion executive and former director of Smythson’s, with tears in her eyes as she watched her husband announce he would step down to install a Leave Prime Minister.
As we know, it did not work out that way. I can say that the only serious pang I have had about the UK’s glorious exit from the EU is that moment, to have seen Cameron resign, unnecessarily, and his wife made sad by it.
For there was no need. Nobody that I knew on Vote Leave wanted the PM to resign. It is a sign of his immense good character and trustworthiness that, from Michael Gove and Daniel Hannan down, everybody wanted Cameron to stay.
Even though he had campaigned for Remain, we all trusted him implicitly to execute the will of the people and to do so well. Personally, I thought Cameron might relish going back to Brussels with a Leave vote in his pocket, sitting down with Juncker and laughing at him for not having granted the emergency brake.
That trust placed in Cameron by his colleagues was not unusual if you knew the man. He was straightforward, and said what he thought. Unlike, say, Vince Cable or Ken Clarke, he didn’t “brief” behind backs.
Cameron leaves a government that found Britain broken, impoverished and divided by Gordon Brown much freer, better, and happier than when he took office. He allowed the people referendums on the most important issues of the day, placing his trust in them. He left a generation of school-children better educated, he lifted people out of poverty, he empowered the helpless, he advanced civil rights and he did all this with a smile and a kind spirit.
His personal qualities saved Britain from perpetual Labour government. When a resurgent Gordon Brown was about to call a snap election, it was David Cameron’s glorious, no-podium, barn-stormer of a conference speech that prevented the election being called when Labour were seven points ahead.
George Osborne, Robert Halfon and David Cameron came up with an inheritance tax cut pledge so popular with the elderly that Brown shook at the Dispatch Box as he faced the upstart LOTO at the next PMQs:
The Prime Minister didn’t quite win enough for a majority, but his genius, big. bold stroke was to go into coalition with the Liberal Democrats, making Nick Clegg an offer of real power that he could not refuse.
He was a master at PMQs from both sides of the bench. Enjoy Mr. Cameron’s best single moment at PMQs:
And, of course, his substantive achievements were legion. Here is David Cameron’s legacy:
David Cameron and George Osborne were the opposite to Brown and Blair; they worked as one, a fantastic team at the top. When they came into Parliament, Blair had a landslide and it was impossible to see the stale, angry old white men’s party (91% of MPs before May and Cameron’s reforms were white men) ever being a true force again.
But they kept the faith and matched their substantive reforms with political jujitsu that caused Labour to wipe itself out in Scotland and in fact put the Tories in as opposition to the SNP.
Nobody is perfect, but David Cameron had less than ten years and he took the UK from disaster to sunlit uplands; took the Conservatives from woeful opposition to the only possible party able to win a general election.
He leaves a free, reformed, socially liberal, economically conservative Britain behind him. I am so proud to have been one of his supporters, even though we differed on Brexit. He is a great reformer, and his proud legacy will outlive him.
After the Trump wipeout coming for the Republican party, expect to see a Cameronite Republican follow Hillary Clinton to the White House. Mr. Cameron’s British brilliance can be repeated across the Atlantic.