Peter HITCHENS

One man’s to blame for this whole Brexit fiasco

WHAT if David Cameron had never been Prime Minister? What if you’d listened to me and kept this disastrous politician out of office in 2010? This thought springs to mind after the recent revelation by Donald Tusk, president of the European Council. Mr Tusk says Mr Cameron confessed to him he only called the EU referendum because he thought it would never happen.

And it was this childish, irresponsible trickery (typical of Mr Cameron) which put us where we are now – a constitutional crisis with no obvious end, a chaotic, ill-managed exit from the EU which will satisfy nobody and almost certainly hurt quite a few innocent bystanders.

Mr Tusk recalled that the Tory leader had told him he felt safe in promising a referendum because his coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, would block the idea.

Well, I had always assumed this was so, but it was good to get it from such a powerful source – reinforced when it was officially denied, always the best sort of confirmation.

Mr Cameron’s whole aim in life was to save the Tory Party from a well-deserved doom. Why bother?

By 2010, the Tory Party obviously hated its own supporters, and was physically dying. Its real membership was so small and old that it could only fight elections by expensively bussing large numbers of apolitical but ambitious young men and women into marginal seats to do the donkey work. Big donors were wondering if it was worth their while financing it any more.

One more proper defeat, and the Tory Party would have split and collapsed, not before time. Far from being a bad thing, this would have left the way open for a new party that actually was conservative, patriotic, against crime, in favour of good schools, friendly to the married family. It might even have devised a coherent plan for leaving the EU, and won a parliamentary majority for that policy.

After all, we already have plenty of political parties which speak for political correctness, Brussels rule, stupid foreign wars, unmarried families, concreting over the countryside, dreadful schools and letting criminals off. It would have made a change to have one that took a different line. Would it have been so bad to have endured a few extra years of Gordon Brown to win that prize? His government wouldn’t have differed much from a mis- named ‘Conservative’ government. Actually, it might even have been better than the Coalition we got.

George Osborne didn’t fix the economy, as he keeps claiming. Anything but, as everyone outside the South East knows all too well. And I doubt Mr Brown (chastened by the Iraq War) would have been mad enough to intervene in Libya.

And what a great difference that would have made. For it was Mr Cameron’s mad, thoughtless overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi that launched the current phase of mass migration into Europe and Britain. This disaster is still out of control and has caused insoluble migration crises all across the continent, not to mention much misery for the migrants themselves.

If Mr Brown had won in 2010, I suspect the country would be in better shape by far than it is now, while Jeremy Corbyn would still be quietly growing marrows in his North London allotment, a forgotten fringe figure. And people like me might be able to go into politics and do some good, instead of being kept out of it by a trio of ultraliberal party machines. As it is, just look at it. You should have listened to me. It’s too late now.