David Cameron's extraordinary admission that "the latent Leave gene in the Conservatives was much stronger [than I thought]" is one of the most telling revelations in a memoir – For the Record, published this week – that appears to combine eye-watering candour with exasperating understatement.

Interviews with the former PM do little to dispel the still widely held belief that the man who led the Conservatives for 11 years never quite got to grips with what one aide famously maligned as the "mad, swivel-eyed loons" within his own party. Giving the impression Maastricht completely passed him by, he confesses he "didn't foresee" that a lot of Tories wanted to get out of the European Union.

The Telegraph London