David Cameron Wants You to Remember Him for More Than Just Brexit
The former prime minister’s new memoir, For the Record, spends just 50 of 700 pages on the disastrous referendum that spun the United Kingdom into political chaos.
Former British Prime Minister David Cameron in Beijing in 2018.
Photographer: Pool/Getty Images AsiaPac
In May 2015, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron collapsed into the back seat of his armored car with his wife, Samantha, and wept with relief. He’d just pulled off a political miracle, defying the odds to win an outright majority for his Conservative Party in the general election. It was, he told his team, “the sweetest victory” of his career.
The taste of that triumph turned to dust a year later when British voters rejected his impassioned appeal to remain within the European Union and chose to leave in the Brexit referendum. It’s this catastrophic defeat, which promptly ended his career, that’s defined Cameron’s premiership.