Why David Cameron is a fool

…other than for the obvious reasons, that is. And it’s not just him. I hadn’t seen this coming either. I’d always thought that if the UK was given a referendum on EU membership they’d vote to stay. Because I knew that big business would want to remain, and I thought that would be enough.

Sadly I miscalculated.

So did David Cameron.

And yet, he ought to have known better. Because he’s going to be in the unenviable position of being the Prime Minister who took Britain out of the EU. And the reason for that is the disgusting tactics that he and his friends and cronies on the right wing have been using for years to get and keep themselves in power: jingoism, racism, fear and lies.

And the problem with this kind of tactic – as politicians in 1930s Germany learned only too well – is that there’s always some vile being who’s willing to go even deeper into the filth at the heart of the human psyche. There’s always someone who will say the unthinkable – and believe it at least to the extent that they won’t back down in the face of minor public revulsion, until eventually it becomes normal to express such thoughts. There’s always someone who will tell a bigger, more extreme lie.

So when conservative with a small C meets UKIP with a large helping of ugly, in a question relating to nationalism, there’s only one way it’s going to go.

Badly.

But it’s not even as straightforward as that. If we assume that David Cameron really does want the UK to remain in the EU (and he’s a Tory, after all, which means that you really can’t believe a word he says), then he’s been viciously stabbed in the back, presumably by the modern equivalent of Sir Humphrey. Because it was Cameron who announced the date of the referendum, almost certainly following consultation with his advisors. He probably thought “23 June, yes, that’s fine, then we can pop off and have a jolly good holiday afterwards and come back and get on with being part of Europe”.

Only if you look at the polls, they’ve lurched towards Leave since early June. Since 2 June in fact. Since the 90^th birthday of Her Majesty. Giving us yet another chance to wave the flag as we sink slowly beneath the waves.