The real failings exposed by David Cameron’s memoir

David Cameron claims that the 2016 Brexit referendum was “necessary” and “inevitable”, but it’s unclear if he means for the Tory party or the country (Five things we learned from Cameron’s memoir, 16 September). Maybe in his mind the two are indivisible.

I don’t really blame Cameron for his gambling and cavalier nature. His irresponsibility is probably an inevitable part of a deeply cosseted upbringing. I find it incredible that the political and media establishment is still in thrall to a rotten system that has produced a succession of private school and Oxbridge-educated leaders that have led the UK to the brink of calamity.

Perhaps the obvious reason for the relative lack of debate is that society is still basically controlled by men and women very similar to Cameron; and it would be simply too undermining of their own sense of entitlement to fundamentally question one of their own.
Joe McCarthy
Dublin

• David Cameron blames Boris Johnson and Michael Gove for the leave vote (Cameron: Johnson has behaved appallingly, 14 September). Really? Not the six years of his own devastating austerity policy, reducing many in the regions and suburbs to a desperate state of “just about managing” or not quite managing at all? Not his government’s lack of an effective regional or industrial policy to bring some kind of equity and hope back to the areas “left behind”? Not his government’s failure to tackle the problems of zero-hours contracts, runaway executive pay, recruitment abroad as a way of reducing wages, purchase of new housing by people not intending to live in it but purely as an investment, thus exacerbating the housing crisis? Yet again, history gets rewritten as a battle between different rightwing factions instead of as the class war it certainly is, when looked at through the prism of Cameron’s premiership.
Rosy Leigh
London

• David Cameron doesn’t identify his real failure as prime minister. We elect our MPs in order that a government can be formed to act in the best interests of the people of this country.

It was Mr Cameron’s duty to make an assessment of our membership of the EU and decide whether continued membership was in our interests. Given that he campaigned for continued membership, it is clear that he believed that this was so. His duty was not, therefore, to call a referendum. He didn’t discharge this duty but set the perceived electoral interests of the Conservative party above the interests of the country. That is his real failure.
Shaun Pye
Leeds

• I haven’t read Cameron’s memoir yet, but I’ve heard enough to know that he considers himself something of a victim of Brexit. How is he wrong? Let me count the ways.

Throughout his six years in office, every EU summit he attended was portrayed as a mission into enemy territory. Prior to the referendum, Cameron spent his time playing to the gallery in the European Research Group and among Ukip voters rather than make a positive case for Britain’s EU membership. Small wonder, then, that in 2016 he was unable to persuade the nation that remaining was in the national interest.

Less complacent leaders than Cameron might have prepared a contingency plan for the event of a leave vote. Instead, Cameron hummed off into the sunset, leaving others to deal with the constitutional and political crisis left in his wake.
Daniel Peacock
Manchester

• The most depressing element of the extracts from David Cameron’s book is that it clearly shows us that Westminster is being run like the sixth-form common room of an exclusive private school for exceptionally privileged, out-of-touch, spoiled boys.
Amanda Baker
Edinburgh

• I think about Brexit every day and about what the consequences will be. It makes me very depressed. Who knew Dave and I had so much in common?
Liz Fuller
London

• Instead of storing up resentment and hoping to settle scores one day, would Boris Johnson please publish his memoirs now?
Dr John Doherty
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire

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