What’s to blame for this misfortune? David Cameron’s hubris about Brexit | Anne Perkins

Sometime before the 2015 general election, an aeon ago in the history of British politics but less than two years ago in ordinary time, David Cameron told the Financial Times that he wanted to be judged on his success in resolving the two big questions that had overshadowed British politics for nearly a generation. This is how he described them: “One is, does the United Kingdom want to stay together? Yes. Secondly does the United Kingdom want to stay in a reformed European Union? Yes.”

No need to trouble with the score, then.

But where is Cameron, that sunny optimist, on this bleak morning when half his fellow Britons feel as if their country is being severed from Europe like a limb from its body? Where is he today, the day after the Scottish parliament voted in favour of a second referendum? Cameron is famously even tempered in the face of the buffeting of fate. He is a man said by those who know him to be exempt from the dark nights of the soul that keep ordinary folk tossing and turning at night in agonies of self-loathing. But even that David Cameron must have given some thought to the chaos his catastrophic commitment to a referendum on Europe has unleashed. And wondered why he ever thought it was a good idea.

To govern is to choose, they say, and politicians often make bad choices at big moments. They sweat over the right course to take. They face the risk and take the chance. The real indictment of Cameron is that he didn’t acknowledge that he was taking a risk. It is not that he failed to understand the consequences of failure, it’s just that failure wasn’t something that happened to him. So in the greatest act of hubris since Oedipus tried to defy the prophecy of the gods, he went ahead.

He told Angela Merkel not to worry, he was a winner. He let half the cabinet campaign on the other side of the argument. This disaster did not unleash itself all at once. It was a matter of a sequence of tactical choices that ended up precipitating him and us into the abyss. All future politicians should look at the small steps that led to disaster, and learn from them.

It is just over four years since Cameron conceded a referendum in his Bloomberg speech in January 2013. It was a good speech, thoughtful and insightful about the EU’s strengths and failings. It recognised the extraordinary achievement of peace, how it had happened not “like a change in the weather” but because of “determined work over generations”.

He was also uncompromising about the importance for the UK of remaining a member. And while he promised a referendum, he also said it wouldn’t happen until the EU had reformed and adapted to the changing demands of a globalised economy.

He laid out an ambitious vision of a different kind of EU. It would, he admitted, require extensive remodelling, with the support of all 28 members. He held out the distant ambition of an EU that looked more like the UK. He said he wouldn’t have a referendum until the reforms were made. He said he wouldn’t have a referendum that was a choice between the status quo and coming out. And then he did.

Cameron didn’t mess up through stupidity, or cupidity, or venality or ignorance. He messed up because of the way he did politics. All shine and no substance. He treated politics as a game of chance, a matter of tactics and calculated odds disguised under a veneer of principle by a handful of totemic policies like same-sex marriage. (One of the short list of achievements he mentioned on his departure from public life.)

Unexpectedly in power with a Tory majority for the first time since 1992, instead of facing down the right of the party who were demanding a referendum he was forced to concede. He pledged to have one before the end of 2017.

Then he went early, with no high profile reforms to justify it. And finally, instead of framing the campaign as a battle for a better, stronger future, for a Europe of which Britain was a proud member, dwelling on its achievements and elaborating on its potential – an approach that might have got, say, the Germans and the Dutch fighting on the same side – he allowed it to become a virility contest about whether or not Britain could stand alone. Instead of trying to persuade voters that change was good, he conceded it was bad.

Confident of victory, Cameron did not consider the consequences of the campaign. So in the end, he did not just make defeat possible, he shaped the way that the defeat itself would be interpreted. He accidentally rigged the course for today. Those questions he wanted resolved? It turns out he got the answer wrong. It wasn’t yes, it was no.