Why can’t former prime ministers stay out of the limelight?

Leaders of the UK have more in common than that which divides them, and that includes Cameron and Johnson, says Sean O’Grady

‘So, prime minister, exactly who is responsible for the mess we’re in?’ (Getty)

There’s nothing as ex as an ex-prime minister,” so they say, but that has never stopped our most senior elder statesmen and stateswomen from trying to prove otherwise. Usually they make no difference; sometimes it can be fun to watch.

David Cameron is an interesting example. Telling Boris Johnson to be more “muscular” in his environmentalism might carry more authority had Cameron not turned down the offer of chairing the COP26 Climate Conference in November. It’s also worth recalling how he once famously dismissed the climate crisis as “green crap” and fitted a ludicrous miniature windmill to his house in Notting Hill, derided as the ultimate in pretentious token politics and rumoured to be powered off the mains. The Coalition government he led might have had some success is getting CO2 emissions down, but part of that was by crashing the economy into an austerity recession. In his memoirs Cameron did take the opportunity to tell a few home truths about Johnson in his memoirs, published in 2019, but bybthen it was far too late. Knowing that Johnson never believed in Brexit might have been handier Intelligence had we known about it earlier.