When David Cameron first launched his campaign to be the Conservative Party leader in 2005, he had the support of just 14 MPs. Greg Barker, Andrew Robathan and Peter Luff stood down at the 2015 election, having failed to achieve full cabinet rank, while Hugo Swire will join them at the next election. Cameron ended the careers of Peter Viggers and John Butterfill over the expenses and lobbying scandals. His closest ally, George Osborne, now edits the Evening Standard. Just one of those 14 supporters, Michael Gove, is stillin the cabinet, while five have been kicked out of the Conservative Party by another, Boris Johnson.
The fate of the Cameroons reflects the story of David Cameron. He was the most able Conservative politician for 17 years, and took over a party that was £20m in debt, had fewer than 200 seats in parliament, and had suffered its first, second and fourth worst electoral defeats in its history. In 2010, he gained more seats in one night than any other Tory leader (excepting the National Government coalition in 1931) and in 2015 he won its first majority for 23 years. His party has yet to find a successor with a fraction of his gifts. But Cameron’s leadership ended in cataclysmic failure, shattering him, his faction and quite possibly his country. His party seems to have forgotten his achievements even more completely and quickly than the Labour Party rejected Tony Blair. For the Record is his attempt to explain what went wrong – and to recover some of the lustre that he lost on 23 June 2016, when the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union.
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