TYPICAL. The postcard from the Queen has been lost in the post (the same happens every year with the offer of a damehood), so one can only imagine how she is feeling about this year’s much interrupted break at Balmoral. Holiday horribilis just about covers it.
First, Boris Johnson rocks up to secure the monarch’s approval on the proroguing of parliament, a decision that proves highly controversial and places the Queen where she least likes to be: in the political thick of it.
Now one of her previous Prime Ministers has surfaced to open the wounds of the Scottish independence referendum. The scene is Balmoral, the premier is David Cameron, whose memoirs are out today. Helpfully, a Sunday paper gave him a lot of money to serialise the book ahead of publication, so we have not had to wait until today, or hand over £25, to learn the essence of what he writes.
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Mr Cameron describes coming down to breakfast at Balmoral in summer 2014 and being greeted with the news that a poll had put Yes ahead for the first time. The Queen was not present, but “Dave”, as he likes to be known, did his duty and reassured the assembled equerries, ladies-in-waiting, and the moderator of the Church of Scotland (just your typical Sunday brunch crowd) that it was a rogue poll.
Inside, however, he was not so calm. “I was struggling to convince myself, let alone them.” Reassurance came a week later when the Queen, talking to the crowd outside Crathie Kirk, was heard saying she hoped Scots would “think very carefully” about the looming decision. The meaning of the remark was pored over at the time, and has been since, but Mr Cameron has no doubt about its significance. “I was delighted,” he writes.
The extract gives the impression that, his nearest and dearest aside, the Queen is one of the few people of whom Mr Cameron speaks well in For the Record. Boy, is he angry. Boris only backed Brexit to advance his career, he says. Dominic Cummings, the PM’s chief aide, had “something of the night” about him (Dave, always the husky-loving eco warrior, recycled that one from Ann Widdecombe who said it of Michael Howard). Leave campaigners flat out lied. And so on.
Far and away, the figure targeted for the most loathing is Michael Gove, who is castigated as serially disloyal, a “foam-flecked Faragist … an ambassador for the post-truth age”. Between that latter remark, and Cameron accusing Messrs Gove and Johnson of “leaving the truth at home”, one has to say that when it comes to inventive ways of calling a chap a liar an Eton education really does come into its own.
Mr Gove, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, has not so far spoken up in his own defence.
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As luck would have it, his wife has a column in the Daily Mail and can do it for him. So it was yesterday that we learned the full, sorry tale of how two families, the Camerons and Goves, fell out over Brexit. And you thought the Mafia had issues with conflict resolution.
Ms Vine says some “quite colourful language” has been used in relation to her husband, and thinks she knows why Mr Cameron should have taken the parting of the ways so badly. It is because he and Mr Gove were such close friends, and as everyone knows, one-time chums are only second to family in their ability to turn into enemies.
“It is in large part because of Boris and Michael that Dave’s political career was cut short,” she concedes. “That was never the intention, but it was the outcome.” How understanding. But there’s more. “They weren’t the only catalysts, of course. It may also have had something to do with the fact that, having decided to go ahead with a referendum that many, including Michael, counselled against, Dave allied himself so closely to the Remain campaign he almost had no choice but to resign when they lost.” Which is a long way of saying it was your own fault, mate.
Ms Vine finally settles on her answer to whatever happened to the likely lads Michael and Dave, friends forever, or at least for 20 years, until they were not. Their falling out is seen as proof of “the destructive power of politics” and, wait for it, “a metaphor for how deeply and irretrievably the referendum seems to have divided the wider nation”.
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You often hear the same said of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, and it is just as questionable when applied to that event. What is being confused here is cause and effect. The referendums did not cause divisions; divisions caused the referendums. In neither case did the polls come out of a clear blue sky. They were fed by historical choices and contemporary assessments. How do I feel about Scotland/the EU? Where do I believe Scotland/the EU will be better off? Is it worth the bother of changing?
In Ms Vine’s case, it is all too clear where and when things began to go wrong, even if she gives the game away without realising it. With her talk of staying with the Camerons on Jura “where Samantha’s mother, Annabel, has the most beautiful, magical house”, of weekends at Chequers, of holidays abroad with Samantha and the children “while the boys worked hard at Westminster”, she presents a picture of an elite cut off from the lives and experiences of most people. Wonder how hard austerity hit at Chequers?
Worse, she presents a world in which politics is a game for those who feel entitled enough to play it. The rest of us watch and await the consequences. In the case of the EU referendum the outcome had consequences for her husband and Mr Cameron, but many have experienced far worse than broken friendships. There have been those, too, of course, but when set aside the havoc that may yet be wrought such things are small beer.
Mr Cameron saw problems within his party and used the referendum to try to solve them. He did not appreciate the dangers in calling a referendum in a society that was already deeply divided by austerity – the clear policy of his Government – into the haves and have nots. Europe was the Tories’ psychodrama, and then they made it the country’s.
Judging by his interview with Tom Bradby, Mr Cameron continues to be bewildered by the consequences of his actions. He can sort that out in his own time, if he ever does. Same with the Vine-Goves and their hurt feelings. The rest of us don’t have the luxury of more reflection; we simply have to make the best of things as they are.
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