Cameron’s clever defence: that he can’t do a proper job after leaving office either

Hauled before two select committees to answer for his Greensill lobbying role, David Cameron yesterday claimed his text to the treasury asking for a “rate cut” might in fact have meant to say “VAT cut”. As the former prime minister put it: “I think I’m a victim of spellcheck here.” A what now? Still, you’ll have nothing but respect for this excuse, which is basically: “I fear that I, a standup guy, have been autocorrected into a complete chancer.” And yet … on which phone software does VAT autocorrect to rate? I’m afraid I found it rather difficult to watch this section of the hearings and not think: can you ducking believe this aunt.

I say “this section of the hearings”. In fact, Cameron’s appearances provided if not an embarrassment of riches, then certainly an embarrassment of embarrassments. Though he declined to reveal either his vast Greensill salary, or precisely how many millions he made in 2019 when he sold just some of his shares, the audience was repeatedly invited to consider his plight. “There isn’t really a roadmap for an ex-prime minister,” Cameron lamented at one point, “particularly a young one … ” Seriously, dude. I’ll give you a ducking roadmap.

Hilariously, Cameron had come ready-armed with a solution to the problem of himself. Namely, “a new special committee” to guide former holders of the highest office in the land through the moral maze of acquiring huge amounts of money. (But who would chair it? A former politician, I guess. George Osborne?)

It does seem genuinely incredible that such a professed opponent of the nanny state should believe it is the state’s job to provide some kind of aftercare facility to assist former prime ministers on their financial trolley-dashes. Politicians who are permanently telling ordinary people that they need to take personal responsibility are so often appalling at doing it themselves. Then again, I’m sure it’s harder when you’re super-rich as opposed to just trying to make in-work benefits stretch the week. Maybe this is what former Telegraph editor Charles Moore meant when he lamented that Cameron was “trapped in wealth”. Either way, great to see a prime minister who could barely wake up without shutting a community library finally want to build something. Unfortunately, it’s the Whitehall Halfway House for Former Prime Ministers Who Can’t Read Good.

It is unclear how much Cameron read about Greensill’s difficulties. He seems to have relied rather heavily for information on the firm’s own internal podcast, which we must assume was the supply-chain-finance version of Soviet headlines such as “TRACTOR PRODUCTION UP 9,000 PER CENT”.

Other lowlights? “Just because a business goes into administration,” said Cameron at one point, “it doesn’t mean that everything was wrong, it doesn’t mean the whole thing was necessarily a giant fraud.” Oof. I enjoyed imagining Cameron’s post-hearing debrief with his lawyer-appointed media trainer. “Jesus wept, David. You had one job – DON’T SAY ‘GIANT FRAUD’.” “But I said it doesn’t mean it was a giant fraud.” “Oooooh, ‘DOESN’T MEAN’! Do you think anyone is going to remember the words ‘doesn’t mean’, you daft shepherd-hut plonker? Or do you think that thanks to you, every time they close their eyes and think of Greensill, the words lining their eyelids are going to be ‘GIANT FRAUD’?”

For all the excruciating theatrics of his Greensill inquisition, though, there is something slightly arse-about-tit about Cameron being pulled up on his failure to understand what was happening in some job he did after office, when his own book revealed how he didn’t understand what was happening while he was in office. Here he is not bothering to have a clue about Andrew Lansley’s disastrous health reforms. “[Lansley] was too submerged in the detail,” breezes Cameron. “The jargon he’d use was baffling. I remember sitting in cabinet when he shared his reform white paper. It was like an artist unveiling a piece he’d spent years on, and everyone wondering what on earth it was.” Ah well. I see you rushed it all through anyway. But hey – what’s the worst that could happen? Like, the worst scenario where it would have really helped if health HADN’T been reorganised by some under-read dilettante?

Oh right. We’re still living through it. If only we’d had a second special committee to assist serving prime ministers who can’t read good. For now, all we’ve got is David Cameron, just another somewhat affronted guy in a long, long line of somewhat affronted guys who have donned the spectacles of contrition and retorted: “I didn’t sit on the audit committee.”

There’s never a shortage of these guys, is there, with their enormous lack of self-awareness and enormous bank balances. David Cameron famously came to office as a man who’d never had a proper job outside Westminster (I refuse to seriously count “press officer for Carlton Television”). He would now like you to believe he isn’t capable of doing a proper job after leaving office either – at least, not without the mentoring of a “special committee”. I mean, honestly … duck that for an excuse.

• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist