One week into Brexit Britain and how things have changed for David Cameron

Our chief political commentator John Rentoul charts the Prime Minister’s fall from power, day by day, from the moment the first results of the referendum started to come through

David Cameron attends Somme commemorations in Thiepval, northern France last week (AP)

Friday 24 June: The first inkling that all was not well came at one minute past midnight, when Newcastle beat Sunderland to declare the first result of the referendum. David Cameron, watching the results with George Osborne and aides in Downing Street realised immediately that the one-point lead for Remain in Newcastle was a bad sign.

Jim Messina, the American data wizard, had predicted a win for Remain nationally by 51 per cent to 49 per cent. He had produced benchmarks for each local council based on that national result, benchmarks which were slightly different from those used by the BBC and by Chris Hanretty of the University of East Anglia.

When the Sunderland result came in minutes later, it too suggested a stronger showing for Leave nationally – not as strong as the BBC and Hanretty benchmarks implied, but soon the results were showing a fairly consistent pattern in Leave’s favour.

By 3am it was clear to the Prime Minister that it was all over. “All political lives end in failure,” he said to his team, according to Anthony Seldon in The Times.

Osborne tried to persuade him not to resign. Two weekends before, when the opinion polls were looking bad for Remain, Cameron had been definite that he should go if he lost, but the Chancellor had tried to insist that he could stay on if the result were really close, such as 50.1 per cent for Leave.

By 5am it was clear that the result was an emphatic Leave vote, 51.9 per cent, 1.3m votes ahead of Remain. Cameron had no hesitation that he would announce his resignation, which he did, later that morning, Samantha by his side, outside the door of No 10.

He said he would step down after a successor had been elected, by the start of October. Only in his final sentences did the emotion hit him. His voice faltered as he said; “I love this country, and I feel honoured to have served it.”

Back inside the shiny black front door, officials were “crying like babies” and Cameron, himself in tears, thanked them briefly before disappearing into his study with Samantha.

Saturday 25 June: Boris Johnson, having briefly welcomed the result with Michael Gove and Gisela Stuart of the Leave campaign the day before, said nothing in public, but was photographed playing in a charity cricket match.

Sunday 26 June: The Labour Party entered its own leadership crisis, as Jeremy Corbyn sacked Hilary Benn, the shadow Foreign Secretary, at 1am, after The Observer reported Benn was planning to lead shadow cabinet resignations to press Corbyn to quit.

Monday 27 June: Cameron had recovered his composure. Making a statement on the referendum in Commons he started with a joke for Rosena Allin-Khan, the new MP for Tooting. She should “keep her mobile phone turned on because she might be in the shadow Cabinet by the end of the day”. He added: “And I thought I was having a bad day.”

Like Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair before him, his command of the House, now that he was leaving, was good humoured and total. His sunniness seemed almost inappropriate. Some MPs were angry with him for having said that he would stay as Prime Minister to implement the will of the people. Of course he had to say that: otherwise the referendum would have turned into a vote on him. Now he said: “I think the country requires a new Prime Minister and Cabinet to take it in this direction. This is not a decision I have taken lightly, but I am absolutely convinced that it is in the national interest.”

Tuesday 28 June: The Prime Minister attended a meeting of the European Council in Brussels. It must have been like going to an office party after you have been sacked. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, was sympathetic. I understand that Cameron said to her that, if she had given him the power to impose an emergency brake on EU immigration in his negotiations in February, he could have won the referendum. She said that she could never have done that.

Cameron has told friends that he believes that Merkel’s early life in East Germany, a country that used to shoot people who tried to leave it, has marked her deeply on the question of migration.

Wednesday 29 June: Cameron was back in the House of Commons for Prime Minister’s Questions. While the Conservative leadership contest seemed to be proceeding in orderly fashion to the inevitable Boris Johnson succession, which Cameron didn’t want but to which he was resigned, the Labour leader was holding on in the face of the resignation of most of his shadow ministers.

Cameron decided he didn’t care whether his words strengthened Jeremy Corbyn’s position or not, he was going to say what he thought: “For heaven’s sake man, go!”

Thursday 30 June: At 9.02am Michael Gove stunned Westminster with an email announcing that he was standing for the Tory leadership because he had come to the conclusion that “Boris cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead”.

Now Boris knows what Gove is really like, said a source in No 10. Cameron had always taken the view that Boris was Boris but that Gove’s desertion to the Leave side was unforgivable.

Theresa May launched her leadership campaign, suddenly the front runner, and a little later Johnson announced that the next prime minister “cannot be me”.

Cameron was later seen striding through the Portcullis House annex to the Palace of Westminster, beaming, and was reported to be relaxed and cheerful in the MPs’ tearoom.

Friday 1 July: Cameron attended the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Somme at Thiepval in France, a solemn reminder of the conflicts that gave rise to the European Union from which the UK was now disengaging – although it was becoming clearer by the day how hard this would be. At the same time, in Westminster, Gove formally launched his leadership campaign, while allies of Johnson accused him of treachery.

As the Prime Minister – for another 10 weeks anyway – flew back to Britain and reflected on an extraordinary week, I am told that he doesn’t regret his decision to hold the referendum. It was right in democratic principle, he says. But his political life had ended in failure, as he had said a week before.