In the UK, almost all former leaders have said in detail what they think of Brexit: Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and John Major, regardless of their political orientation, knew that leaving the EU was a bad idea. That's easy to say from the perspective of the senior premier.
Only one remained silent until last week. The one who made the drama possible: conservative ex-prime minister David Cameron.
In 2015, euphoric with the election victory and under pressure from the right-wing political fringe, he voted for a referendum on Britain's exit from the EU. Cameron himself was against Brexit, but seemed convinced that the majority of the British wanted to stay in the EU. He knew his people badly: 51.9 percent voted on 23 June 2016 for a withdrawal.
A day later, Cameron announced his retirement for October. And since then Brexit employs British and EU bureaucrats almost daily. The departure is planned for March 29, 2019 - but also a good eight weeks before many questions are open.
A document of more than 500 pages, negotiated for months between Brussels and London, failed last week in Parliament. Now Prime Minister Theresa May has to readjust, postpone Brexit - or there will be an exit without any agreement, the hard or no-deal Brexit, with incalculable economic consequences.
And Cameron?
While May prepares for a new Brexit negotiation with the EU, her predecessor does not blame herself. The BBC said after the dramatic parliamentary vote that he regretted the defeat, but not that he had set the exit in motion.
David Cameron: "I do not regret calling the referendum"
Former prime minister on the EUhttps: //t.co/p2pmws7I8I #Brexit pic.twitter.com/fpyqGD4Pfl
The reporters asked Cameron while jogging. Shortly before the decision on May's EU plan last Tuesday, which then crashed in the lower house, Cameron had returned, according to tabloid "Daily Mirror" from a Costa Rica vacation. Apparently "well browned," noted the gossip. His house, which Paparazzi was lying in wait for, left the house loudly surrounded by bodyguards. To Brexit before the vote: not a word.
EXCLUSIVE: What tanned David Cameron had to say today while his Brexit gamble backfiredhttps: //t.co/qDCmw9EwLa pic.twitter.com/QbKlTVwBdI
- Mirror Politics (@MirrorPolitics) January 15, 2019In the fall, there were rumors that Cameron is interested in becoming foreign minister in a future Tory government. It was a plan that opposition Labor MPs in particular called "bizarre" and appealed to Cameron: Please spare us.
God. No.
Did not he do enough damage first time round ?? Please save us all. Https://t.co/bafk8RRyYw
Against a comeback speaks that Cameron - apparently out of sloppiness - have lost his access to the British Parliament. Around 400 political celebrities enjoy the privilege of dining at the Palace of Westminster and being free to move there.
In autumn and again in January 2019, the ex-prime minister was no longer on the list of privileged, reported several British media. Allegedly, because Cameron's office had assumed that the end of the exclusive membership would be announced and reminded of an extension. Stripping in Westminster is thus less impossible for the Brexit polluter.
Otherwise, the former head of government will probably continue writing his autobiography. It should have been published in 2018, but apparently Cameron now has to wait to see how the fiasco, for which he is most responsible, comes to an end.
"Repulsive bungler" or "great premier"?
The Sunday Times wrote that the new release date should be in September. The shift was in the hope "to avoid commenting on Brexit so as not to undermine the Brexit negotiations".
The memoirs are also to be a settlement with May now also resigned Brexit Minister Michael Gove. He is "crazy" and behaves like a "madman" - so it should have told Cameron a confidant, which quoted the "Times" anonymous. Gove had torpedoed as a minister under Premier Cameron whose campaign for an EU whereabouts and actively engaged in the Leave camp for a resignation.
As the premier will remember, the British political magazine "The Week" recently asked influential British union boss Len McCluskey. As a "historical failure" and "disgusting bungler" as the Guardian wrote? Or as a "great premier," as an author of the "New Statesman" orakelte? McCluskey's dry answer: Neither. Posterity will simply forget Cameron.