In December 2008 David Cameron, at that point leader of the opposition, asked: “Why are there great Ulstermen and women on our television screens, in our boardrooms and in our military, but not in our cabinet? The semi-detached status of Northern Ireland politics needs to end. This is not true representative democracy and it has got to change.”
His solution was to agree to the creation of the Ulster Conservatives and Unionists - New Force (UCUNF), a pact between the Conservatives and UUP. But like so many other things that Cameron touched, it brought disaster: in this case the 2010 general election and, for the first time in its history, the UUP returning no MPs. The party is still trying to recover, yet 14 years later it has only one MP.
Cameron’s next disaster was the Scottish independence referendum a decade ago, on September 18 2014. It should have been a fairly easy victory for the Better Together campaign, yet Cameron, by now Prime Minister, was sanguine to the point of virtual coma. Most of his contribution to the campaign consisted of a ‘be afraid, be very afraid’ approach, warning just about everyone in Scotland that they would never be strong enough to stand alone. So stupid was this approach that polling indicated some soft remainers were switching to the Scotland Yes campaign.
It was left to Gordon Brown to ride to his rescue in the final couple of weeks. It was Brown who brought the real passion to the pro-UK pitch, arguing that Scotland was and should remain a key player in the union. He never denied that there were possible hopes and opportunities in the potential break-up, but deconstructed those arguments and warned that all break-ups are difficult and have long-term, often unexpected consequences.
In other words, it was Brown, with key support from within Labour, who made the real case for the Union and the United Kingdom. And he did it as a proud Scot who had risen to the top of UK politics.
Cameron, on the other hand, was a bystander. No passion. No sense of comradeship with Scotland. No real understanding of what lay at the heart of UK unionism. Fair enough, Scottish nationalism lost the referendum, but not on the sort of scale which would have silenced it for at least a couple of generations.
You would have thought that Cameron might have learned something from that referendum. But no. In the Conservative’s 2015 election manifesto he offered a referendum on EU membership, hoping to shut down the growing challenge from Nigel Farage and Ukip. He had another option: he could have made the run-up to 2015 the opportunity to talk to his EU counterparts and address the issues raised by Ukip and the right of his own party.
David Cameron was a disaster for the Conservative Party and a disaster for the United Kingdom. He fuelled and facilitated the rise of new-generation nationalism and populism
But he didn’t. He chose, instead, to tie his hands with the referendum promise. The only lesson he had learned from Scotland was that the status quo would probably win, even if some of its champions were, to put it kindly, a bit naff, a bit mauve. And in the same way he had done nothing before 2015, he did almost nothing afterwards and rushed headlong into the referendum.
He tried the same ‘be afraid, be very afraid’ approach, warning of the catastrophes which would follow if Leave carried the day. But again, there was no passion from him: no sense of him trying to champion the alternative to the little-England nationalism of Farage and Co. What passion there was in the 2016 referendum came mostly from Leave, which summoned up a ‘once and future’ vision of a pre-WW2 England (and it was England it meant) freed of the shackles of the EU.
I had no particular problem with the UK exiting the EU, although I did note that I was concerned about the lack of hard evidence for their arguments coming from the Leave campaign. But Cameron refused to tackle Farage and others head-on. He just seemed to believe that Remain couldn’t possibly lose. And when the reality hit home in the early hours of June 24 2016, he hadn’t even the courage to hang on and pick up the pieces. He simply scarpered and, in so doing, paved the way for his party’s implosion.
He was noticeably quiet on the tenth anniversary of the Scottish referendum and similarly quiet on July 5, when his party finally exploded. I’m not surprised, to be honest. He was a disaster for the Conservative Party and a disaster for the United Kingdom. He fuelled and facilitated the rise of new-generation nationalism and populism. When leadership was required he never provided it. The worst PM in my lifetime.
