David Cameron’s self-indulgent sorrow doesn’t excuse his cowardice

Mr Cameron does not know his own country. His apology for “the uncertainty and division that followed” the referendum result is an attempt to keep alive the fiction that it had to be called – only its conduct was mistaken. Wrong. There was no widespread call for a renegotiated relationship with the EU in the country in 2013 when he made his fateful decision. There was only a problem of Tory party management.

The needless pain inflicted by severe cuts, along with the reaction to immigration, was always going to make it a hard referendum to win. The ground had to be carefully laid, the referendum carefully framed and a compelling cross-party campaign organised. None of that happened. And too little of that is recognised by our wounded, self-indulgently sorrowful ex-PM.

There is certainly some honesty in his book – in his admission that by the end of the campaign he felt engulfed in the “quagmire” of a Tory “psychodrama” – always inevitable in a referendum called only to placate rightwing ultras. He must have known that leveling the charge against Johson and Gove that they had left “the truth at home” over their immigration and NHS campaign pledges would be potentially lethal. But candour compelled him to make it.

But the big lie remains. Cameron was a political coward. You only hold a referendum in a parliamentary democracy if you can win – otherwise all hell breaks loose. Is it parliament or the referendum that represents “the will of the people”? Yet he allowed his rampant right to frame the referendum bill, aided and abetted by a callow Labour party.

There was no requirement for Leave to state what leaving meant – to leave the political and economic institutions of the EU, or only the political institutions? The ambiguity won the campaign and transfixes us still. There was no required supermajority or minimum threshold of voters for a rupture that would have such epic consequences. EU nationals and 16-18 year olds were denied the vote. There was feeble policing of funding and advertising. The campaign was ignoble. Yes, Cameron is right to be fearful about the consequences. He allowed his modernising project to be undermined by his ultra right – and for the country to be undermined in turn. He deserves all the stinging rebukes he receives.