Who trusted David Cameron to tell the truth about Brexit? He's a politician, after all

Both sides in the EU referendum campaign have spouted so much screeching gibberish that no one yet to make up their mind can still be listening

Prime Minister David Cameron suggested he was planning to campaign for Remain before he'd secured the deal he wanted in Brussels (AP)

Was there ever such a glorious age in British public life for the modelling of underwear?

In August, the BBC will break new ground when a flagship show is hosted by someone clad only in his keks. Even now, three months before Gary Lineker is scheduled to present Match of the Day in his Y-fronts, lingerie greets the eye wherever you glance.

The Daily Mail’s silken drawers, for example, are visibly in a frightful twist. OK, you ask, what else is new? If a way could be found to harness that journal’s perpetual rage as an energy source, Shell and Gazprom would be put out of business overnight.

I know, I know. But this time, novelly, one can empathise with the Mail, because responsible for this latest eruption is the sight of David Cameron’s pants on fire.

The paper has come by leaked correspondence between Cameron and Rupert Soames, CEO of the famously unlovely multinational Serco. Soames’ letter to the PM, written a few days after they met, gives the impression that Cameron was committed to keeping this country in the EU (as was always presumed) regardless of any results from the subsequent EU renegotiations on which he claimed his decision would turn.

This February letter also suggests to me that Cameron may have tacitly colluded with – if not actively encouraged – Soames’ plan to persuade a range of FTSE companies to include doomy warnings about a post-Brexit financial catastrophe Brexit in their annual reports.

So soon after George Osborne ridiculed the Leave campaign’s conspiracy theorising, I beg you to read nothing sinister into the following for fear provoking another Wildean thrust from the Chancellor’s satirical sword.

But purely for the record, it wasn’t more than a few days after his Soames meeting that Cameron gave a major speech calling for “wholesale reform” of the prison service.

While Serco does much business within the EU, one of its leading global lines is the private management of prisons, in which it has been accused of failing in its duty of care to inmates on both sides of the Atlantic.

Now no one sane could see a connection between these two events, let alone suspect a mutual back-scratching relationship. This is Britain, by God, the least corrupt country on God’s earth - and dodginess of that type is the preserve of funny foreigners across the Channel (if not as far afoot as Nigeria and Afghanistan).

But at the very least, this distasteful little tale underscores some nagging assumptions about David Cameron. For one thing, his glib, well-practised deceitfulness reminds you of his time honoured “heir to Blair” ambition. Publicly claiming to have an open mind about something he knew he would support in any event – isn’t this almost Cameron’s personal homage to Mr Tony’s denial that he had agreed to join George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq after returning in 2002 from giving those ball-crushingly tight jeans a run-out in Crawford, Texas?

Meanwhile, we sniff yet again the fusty, leathery gentleman’s club scent of the Magic Circle. Rupert Soames, brother of the Tory MP and Cameron loyalist Fatty “Nicholas” Soames, grandson of Winston Churchill, is the latest in a production line of Old Etonians to amplify the MacMillan era echo from more than half a century ago. Happy days, when thoroughly bloody good chaps met at White’s and Boodle’s to sort things out between themselves over a Monte Cristo and a glass of vintage port, selflessly sparing the other ranks any need to bother their little heads with matters of high policy.

I don’t suppose this leak will do the Remain cause (which I sullenly support, for whatever that’s worth) any measurable harm. Both sides have spouted so much screeching gibberish that no one yet to make up their mind can still be listening. Every accusation, however well sourced or fanciful, comes enshrouded in a plague-on-both-your-houses fog of apathetic disdain.

On this basis, it remains as inconceivable as ever that Britain will vote for Brexit (much as it was wholly unthinkable that Jeremy Corbyn would become Labour leader, or Donald Trump the Republican presidential nominee; or that Leicester City would oblige Gary Lineker to honour a facetious tweet-pledge to present MOTD in his knick-knacks).

On June 23, a geriatric nation with an inherent terror of change will hobble on its zimmer to the polls, and irritably vote to stick with the EU by 54-46.

Perhaps history will be kind to Cameron for presiding over such a victory, thereby earning himself a few more miserable years at the helm of a fractious and poisonously divided party. Perhaps it will conclude that all is fair in a war with such colossal implications for Britain’s future; that grubby little deceptions involving a fellow OE aren’t worth even a footnote. Perhaps it would be right.

For now, however, the smoke drifting up from Prime Minister’s pants invokes an all too familiar weary sigh of distaste about a very clever politician who never fails to disappoint with his smallness and vapidity.