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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To miss David Cameron?

105 replies

Yellowredandbrown · 27/09/2022 08:06

Probably won’t be popular but I do.

He was a Tory but a moderate one.

I know some people hold him personally responsible for brexit but I have never subscribed to that view. It was a pressing question that needed answering. I do think he should have done more to show the benefits of being in the EU.

I wish we could have kept him.

OP posts:
Ein · 27/09/2022 08:35

YABU. He was the one who called the Brexit referendum that led to all this mess. You say it was a pressing question that needed answering: I disagree. The problem was that Britain never used its veto in the EU and kept agreeing to things (eg immigration levels, Bulgaria joining, etc) that the majority of the British population didn’t support. So the Tories started losing votes to UKIP and the Tories were worried about Labour overtaking them. That’s the only reason the Tories called a Brexit referendum. Instead of, you know, actually campaigning and trying to win back the trust of their voters, or adjusting policies to reflect voters’ concerns.

Then, having called the referendum, all David talked about was money. It’ll be expensive to leave he said. Nothing about how amazing it was to be part of the biggest peacetime alliance there’s ever been, or how freedom to travel around sunnier countries and retire to Spain is rather nice, or how the real threats are Russia/China and maybe it’s a good idea to be part of the most powerful trading bloc in the world instead being an unimportant little island outside it, or how frictionless trade and being able to take a ham sandwich to France is quite useful.

Ugh. I miss Tony Blair. He got it. He surrounded himself with clever hard working people and they had an agenda and made the country better. All the Tories have done is impoverished the country, over and over again, through austerity, then Brexit, then foolish pandemic policies, and now they’ve crashed the pound so they can give bonuses to bankers. It almost looks like a plot to let Liz mess up so badly the public don’t complain when Boris reappears, like chewing gum on your shoe you thought you’d scraped off.

For years I’ve been saying that Labour are an unelectable mess, but I think we’ve finally reached the point that no one could do worse than the Tories.

David and Boris: the men who broke Britain. 😭

maranella · 27/09/2022 08:37

Cameron is a slimy spiv, so no I don't miss him, but I wish we still had Theresa May - she was the only reasonable leader we've had in the last 12 years.

AppleBag · 27/09/2022 08:37

Ein · 27/09/2022 08:35

YABU. He was the one who called the Brexit referendum that led to all this mess. You say it was a pressing question that needed answering: I disagree. The problem was that Britain never used its veto in the EU and kept agreeing to things (eg immigration levels, Bulgaria joining, etc) that the majority of the British population didn’t support. So the Tories started losing votes to UKIP and the Tories were worried about Labour overtaking them. That’s the only reason the Tories called a Brexit referendum. Instead of, you know, actually campaigning and trying to win back the trust of their voters, or adjusting policies to reflect voters’ concerns.

Then, having called the referendum, all David talked about was money. It’ll be expensive to leave he said. Nothing about how amazing it was to be part of the biggest peacetime alliance there’s ever been, or how freedom to travel around sunnier countries and retire to Spain is rather nice, or how the real threats are Russia/China and maybe it’s a good idea to be part of the most powerful trading bloc in the world instead being an unimportant little island outside it, or how frictionless trade and being able to take a ham sandwich to France is quite useful.

Ugh. I miss Tony Blair. He got it. He surrounded himself with clever hard working people and they had an agenda and made the country better. All the Tories have done is impoverished the country, over and over again, through austerity, then Brexit, then foolish pandemic policies, and now they’ve crashed the pound so they can give bonuses to bankers. It almost looks like a plot to let Liz mess up so badly the public don’t complain when Boris reappears, like chewing gum on your shoe you thought you’d scraped off.

For years I’ve been saying that Labour are an unelectable mess, but I think we’ve finally reached the point that no one could do worse than the Tories.

David and Boris: the men who broke Britain. 😭

I agree with every word.

Snowberry3 · 27/09/2022 08:37

DC tried to bully the chancellor and others in power to provide 'covid' funding to the company he'd invested all his money in, Greensill.
He should be in jail. Utterly corrupt.
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/david-cameron-lobbied-rishi-sunak-to-bail-out-failed-finance-firm-7hqq3xms3

Endlesssummer2022 · 27/09/2022 08:47

What fresh nonsense is this? He should be in court for treason for what he has done to this country. None of what is happening today would have occurred if it hadn’t been for him.

Brexit was not a pressing issue that had to be dealt with in any shape or form. It was an internal argument blown up by the media. He was scared of the ERG nutters in his party so put it to a vote.

However, what he clearly hadn’t banked on is that the media is owned by non-don billionaires who wanted Brexit and brainwashed 17+million people into voting against their interest. The media managed to convince these people by blaming immigrants for their poverty and poor services but it was Cameron and Osbourne’s pathological austerity BS which made everything shit not immigrants. So they created the conditions for Brexit then caused Brexit.

The ERG have now completely taken over the Tory’s and now we are all living in their disaster capitalist west dream.

I hold David Cameron 100% responsible. I fucking despise the prick.

Wonnle · 27/09/2022 08:49

Brexit vote was all his doing desperate to get voted back in . Thing is/was the result wasn't legally enforceable from what I read at the time .

Brexit has fucked this country big time .

lannistunut · 27/09/2022 08:51

Cameron was a careless, selfish, lightweight twat. YABU to miss that shell.

I miss Brown.

bellabasset · 27/09/2022 08:51

Cameron set up a Referendum that allowed 37% of the electorate to vote the UK out of the EU when the terms of leaving were speculation

ByTheSea · 27/09/2022 08:52

lannistunut · 27/09/2022 08:51

Cameron was a careless, selfish, lightweight twat. YABU to miss that shell.

I miss Brown.

Same

lannistunut · 27/09/2022 08:53

This thread has really pissed me off. The Brexit referendum was so reckless, it has fucked Britain up for decades Angry

mast0650 · 27/09/2022 08:54

I miss John Major!! Even though I've never dreamed of voting Conservative. Since Cameron we since to have gone from bad to worse to worser. Dread to think what will happen after Liz Truss!

LizzieSiddal · 27/09/2022 08:55

Cameron was advised by his team NOT to put the referendum in the manifesto. He insisted!

And the way he made his resignation speech and walked back into no 10, humming! He’s an arrogant twit with no sense of responsibility.

We need a Labour government asap.

TakemedowntoPotatoCity · 27/09/2022 08:58

Agree about Theresa, she had integrity and wasn't given a fair go. Look who we've had since!

Cognacsoft · 27/09/2022 09:01

Cameron should never have been pm, he wasn't fit for the job and proved it with Brexit.

VestaTilley · 27/09/2022 09:01

Are you mad? This is all his bloody fault.

He allowed two incredibly divisive referendums which split the country. The EU was not a pressing problem - nobody gave a damn about it outside the Tory party.

His failure ushered in Brexit/Boris and now the awful Truss/Kwarteng disaster.

His Govt slashed public spending, crippling our infrastructure, councils, schools and hospitals. He may have been less ideological than Truss but he was a thoroughly bad thing for the U.K.

Brexit wiped value off our markets which has never been recovered, and will lead to long term decline and underinvestment. He was terrible.

IpanemaChic · 27/09/2022 09:02

You know he used to call the ERG “the fruitcakes and fruit loops”. Well he certainly let them out of the bag and now they are running the show and we have the UK economy in a death-spiral.

So no, Dave can stay in his 25k caravan in his Oxfordshire garden thanks.

AntlerRose · 27/09/2022 09:02

I blame him for the brexit mess. Even if it was a question that needed answering, he was responsible for setting the terms such as a simple majority and for not ensuring the question was clear and for allowing stuff to go out that would have been illegal in other countries.

I didnt find austerity moderate.

BonnesVacances · 27/09/2022 09:03

Ifailed · 27/09/2022 08:19

If you miss Cameron, it just shows how bad the current shower of shit are.

Lol! So true!

sonsmum · 27/09/2022 09:04

He was the catalyst to Brexit. He was so arrogant that he expected the vote to be overwhelmingly No, so he could tell those set on leaving to quash further discussions on the topic.
I think he genuinely thought he was doing the right thing, however arrogance made him overlook the potential of stating there needed to be a a clear majority, ie. 60% in favour, to warrant such a big change.

NellyBarney · 27/09/2022 09:12

I don't miss Cameron, and I certainly don't miss Osborne. I sometimes find myself being nostalgic about Blair, but then remind myself that he wasn't that brilliant, he just was lucky to be at the top during pretty good economic times. I think that's what we all miss: the relatively smooth waters, and it's so hard to stomach that politicians, of what ever colour, have so little power over the world we live in. Some are just a little bit decent than others, but all are just helpless little frogs in a global tsunami.

MarshaBradyo · 27/09/2022 09:17

I voted yabu as his name just conjures up him giving us Brexit and quitting the next day

I was so annoyed at the time

TheLoupGarou · 27/09/2022 09:18

Christ on a bike. YABU for reasons everyone else has already stated.

Miss David Cameron? No I do not.

DuckTails · 27/09/2022 09:19

Jourdain11 · 27/09/2022 08:28

Nobody ever 'has' to hold a referendum. Referenda are fundamentally undemocratic. It's basically asking people to vote on an issue they don't have a full understanding of and then using that (hopefully) as a rationale for saying, "We'll have to do what I want now because the country has demanded it." Of course, in Cameron's case, it didn't work.

You vote for your Member of Parliament to make decisions on your behalf, because they're paid to do so and supposedly have a grasp of the issues at hand (again, because they're paid to do so). That's why we don't have referenda about fracking, the budget, the cost of single-use plastic bags... And if you don't like the way your MP is voting, you lobby them.

”referenda are fundamentally undemocratic” is literally the most fascist statement I’ve ever read on here. Presumably you think elections - unless they happen to go your way - are also undemocratic?

Referenda are the purest form of direct democracy. They were practised in Ancient Greece, where democracy was invented. The only reason we don’t have them today for every issue is because it would be unworkable. Representative democracy - where one person votes on an issue on behalf of 100,000 people or more - is a poor second. To call referenda “undemocratic” is truly insane.

Endlesssummer2022 · 27/09/2022 09:20

‘Some are just a little bit decent than others, but all are just helpless little frogs in a global tsunami.’

No this is completely untrue. Politicians aren’t all just helpless, they do make an impact. Cameron and Brexit is a prime case study. I also can’t stand this ‘they are all as bad as each other crap’.

Also Blair didn’t benefit from a good economy, him and Brown fixed the economy. Towards the end of the Thatcher/Major years, the county was in an absolute state with filthy hospitals, sewage filled waterways and falling down schools. Blair made a massive investment which turbo charged the economy.

lannistunut · 27/09/2022 09:23

DuckTails · 27/09/2022 09:19

”referenda are fundamentally undemocratic” is literally the most fascist statement I’ve ever read on here. Presumably you think elections - unless they happen to go your way - are also undemocratic?

Referenda are the purest form of direct democracy. They were practised in Ancient Greece, where democracy was invented. The only reason we don’t have them today for every issue is because it would be unworkable. Representative democracy - where one person votes on an issue on behalf of 100,000 people or more - is a poor second. To call referenda “undemocratic” is truly insane.

Referenda are not undemocratic but they are not necessarily 'pure' unless there are tight controls on spending etc. Brexit was a very badly planned referendum with a problematic question.

The problems in the Brexit referendum came because it was a national referendum being used to resolve an internal problem for one party. It was never about the national interest.

We are all paying for it, financially and socially, now.