This is a point that's often completely overlooked
'Europe' as a politcal issue had consistently polled as the 8th to 10th most important consideration in a general election. Turn out for European elections was typically 33%, and just 9% of the population could even name their MEP. The overwhelming mood in the country wasn't one of hostility, but rather indifference. Europe was simply an issue that people didn't engage with and had little interest in, believing as they did, that it was remote to them
Now step forward the worst Prime Minister this country has produced in over 100 years (David Cameron)
The only people to whom Europe was really important were that tiny minority who had to deal with them. The body politik of the UK. Europe impinged on their professional lives and with the typical arrogance of an old Etonian he extrapolated that because it was an important to him personally, and his wretched party, then by extension it must be something that consumes all of us. I mean why wouldn't it, if it's important to Dave, then yes, it's important to all of us
Suffice to say, the recklessly cavalier Cameron decided he'd abrogate his own party management responsibility by externalising the the job of referee to an unqualified horde of disengaged and uninformed. It should never have been held.
Cameron of course had lots of other failures
He inherited a recovering economy and plunged it into a double-dip recession. His great philosophical contribution, 'the big society' was always fundamentally flawed in concept and construct. Everyone who tried to breath life into this dead duck left after about 6 months. Suffice to say, it was consigned to the dustbin of great white elephants. His foreign policy was a farce. Despite all the lessons from Iraq he blundered into Libya and created a bigger shiteshow than that which existed before, and then ran away from his responsibility. In Syria he tried (and thankfully failed) to get approval for bombing the side that was fighting ISIS, before 12 months later deciding that perhaps he should be bombing the Islamists instead. He even believed that the FSA existed, years after it was apparent that they'd dissolved. On the environment he destroyed our green industries, he closed down the green investment bank, scrapped subsidies on feed in tariffs. He scrapped no end of useful infrastructure projects including the expansion towns (later reintroducing Ebbsfleet) but somehow contrived to give HS2 the green light (what a d1ckhead). He catastrophically failed on his house building targets with the number of new builds falling even further behind target after he abolished the RDA's and the 300,000 new homes that were committed in their RES's (his so-called bonfire of the Qangos). He said he was going to do away with SPAD's yet ended very quickly employing more than Gordon Brown's government (and he drew them almost exclusively from an axis of Eton and Oxford too). He said he was going to do less gimmicky celebrity, and yet put Carol Vorderman (someone who holds a third class degree in Engineering) in charge of a review of maths teaching, and then asked Mary Portas to undertake a review of the High Street (which resulted in recommending deterring bookmakers and charity shops)
So in the big question of who was the worst Prime Minister between David Cameron and Theresa May, my vote is firmly with Cameron. I believe he's actually surpassed Anthony Eden (long regarded as the 20th centuries worst - and another conservative disaster)
I recall someone in the know once telling me that he was the "junior executive who you'd trust the powerpoint presentation to, but wouldn't dare let anywhere near the project management"
What I find truly staggering though (and it just goes show his self-regard) is that a few months ago he wasn't just floating the idea of returning to front line politics, but with a total lack of self awareness, even went on to nominate himself as a shoo in for Foreign Secretary. Just like that. Foreign Affairs was one area where he was actually at his most deficient. The only thing he could do was mocking impersonations of female world leaders like Merkel or Gillard (his Gillard wasn't bad actually)
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