Some words, though multi-syllabled, can feel far too slight in certain contexts. Take, for instance, “miscalculation”. In the context of David Cameron’s decision to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, it sounds – doesn’t it? – rather pathetic: a discreet burp, when what is called for is some kind of drastically fast-acting emetic. “I do brood,” said the former prime minister in The Cameron Years (26 September, 9pm), a documentary series timed to coincide with his memoirs. Brood: another choice word. According to my Concise Oxford English Dictionary, it means to meditate resentfully. In other words, it’s the kind of thing you do if you’re at war with a neighbour over a hedge – not when you’ve brought an entire country close to the edge of madness.
Semantics, eh? These highly educated boys, with their Greek and their Latin. How come they can’t find the right words now? Personally – and I’m fairly certain this isn’t only wishful thinking – I think Cameron looks haunted in this series, and if some of the stories I’ve heard about him being chased off dance floors and clapped out of posh galleries are even halfway true, it’s not hard to see why; many liberal, metropolitan Tories loathe him even more than the rest of us. Nevertheless, while he was a veritable Edith Piaf when it came to regret, he would go no further. Remorse? No. It was – I can hardly believe I’m writing this – left to his old friend George Osborne to tell it like it is. “I feel responsible,” he says, at the end of the first film. “We held a referendum we never should have had.”
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