David Cameron was forced to step down as prime minister because of Brexit. Photo / AP
David Cameron was forced to step down as prime minister because of Brexit. Photo / AP
David Cameron, the British prime minister who called the Brexit referendum, says in a new memoir that Boris Johnson, Britain's leader now, embraced withdrawing from the European Union only when he sensed it would be politically advantageous.
"He risked an outcome he didn't believe in because it would help hispolitical career," Cameron, who stepped down in 2016 after voters surprisingly backed a withdrawal, writes in the memoir, "For the Record."
After three years of relative silence from the former prime minister, the excerpts from his book read alternately as public apology — of sorts — and personal defence from a man who is still being blamed by many Britons for the political chaos the country now finds itself in.
Johnson became prime minister about two months ago and advocates leaving the European Union under any circumstances.
The book, which has been serialised in The Times of London, comes at an awkward time. While Johnson's uncertainty about whether to leave the bloc earlier in his career is not a secret, Cameron's memoir comes about six weeks before a deadline to leave.
Johnson has been insistent that Britain should leave the European Union — "do or die," he has said — even if no agreement is reached, despite concerns that a "no deal" departure could bring an array of problems, among them food shortages, skyrocketing fuel prices, scarcities of some medications, dayslong waits at the border and perhaps even civil unrest.
The memoir touches on a broad range of issues: the death of Cameron's son Ivan at age 6; his days smoking marijuana in high school at Eton; his university years in Oxford; and other high-profile, non-Brexit-related political issues, notably the Scottish independence referendum and the legalisation of same-sex marriage.
In a new memoir, David Cameron admits that he has regrets - "lots" - many of which relate to Brexit. Photo / Andrew Testa, The New York Times
But, like his immediate successor, Theresa May, Cameron is unlikely to ever escape the shadow of Brexit. Many Britons remain furious over Cameron's decision to call a referendum on membership in the European Union, and the country remains divided on the issue.
The book was subjected to scathing criticism long before it was ever published. When the British network ITV promoted an interview with Cameron on Twitter, saying he "breaks his silence," it was met with responses like, "hasn't he broken enough."
Cameron acknowledges that, unlike Margaret Thatcher, another former British prime minister, he has regrets — "lots" — many of which relate to Brexit. But actually turning the decision over to the voters is not one of them, he says.
In an interview with The Times of London, he added that he had had "some robust exchanges" with people on the issue. "I do understand some people are very angry because they didn't want to leave the EU," he said. "Neither did I."
In an excerpt published in The Times of London on Sunday, Cameron relates a pivotal conversation with Johnson in early 2016 at the tennis court of the US ambassador's residence in London.
"Boris' style on the court is like the rest of his life: aggressive, wildly unorthodox (he often uses an ancient wooden racquet) and extremely competitive," he writes.
Cameron tried, and failed, to dissuade Johnson, at the time the mayor of London, from joining the campaign to leave the European Union, setting the stage for events that would ultimately end the political career of one and catapult the other into Downing Street.
Cameron said that he and Johnson were fundamentally "part of the same team," despite their "disagreements and tensions." With that in mind, Cameron dangled a "top-five" job — the ministry of defense — in front of Johnson, his only real rival in terms of popularity, in exchange for his support in a referendum fight that was just beginning.
Boris Johnson and David Cameron in 2015. Photo / AP
A few weeks later, he told Cameron by text that Brexit would be crushed "like the toad beneath the harrow," but that he could not campaign for the effort to remain in the European Union.
The issue has split the Conservative Party, with Johnson expelling 21 members who said they would defy him on a no-deal withdrawal, and others leaving on their own.
One of those Conservatives expelled, Sam Gyimah, said this weekend that he had joined the Liberal Democrats, who have managed to revive themselves by pledging to block Brexit.
"Since the referendum, the Conservative party has drifted away from One Nation values and towards English nationalism," Gyimah said in a statement Saturday, condemning what he called a "populist, scorched-earth approach to Brexit."
Cameron now concedes that he "failed" — repeating the word three times in the space of three sentences — in his approach, including miscalculating the dominance of the "latent leaver gene in the Tory party," as well as the loyalty of some of his allies.
In particular, Cameron appears to have been particularly stung by what he regarded as the betrayal of Michael Gove, a good friend who served in his Cabinet as justice minister. Gove was "one of the most learned, enlightened people I knew," the former prime minister wrote, before becoming "an ambassador for the post-truth age."
Though he credits Johnson as an effective London mayor whose talent he respected, Cameron said that, by "the end, Boris and Michael seemed to me to be different people."
