David Cameron regrets Brexit vote consequences and criticises Boris Johnson’s actions

David Cameron admits he ‘failed’ to avoid Brexit division but criticises the Boris Johnson camp for ‘sharp practices’.

Then British prime minister David Cameron, right, and then London mayor Boris Johnson in 2015. Picture: Jack Taylor/AFP

David Cameron insists that he was right to hold the Brexit referendum while claiming he is “truly sorry” at the uncertainty and division it has brought and admitting: “I failed.”

The former Conservative prime minister also criticises the Boris Johnson camp for expelling Tory rebels and for “sharp practices’’ in prorogation of parliament, which he said have rebounded.

He also suggests that now-Prime Minister Johnson backed Brexit in 2016 because he calculated it would do more to advance his political career.

The former Conservative prime minister says that Leave’s referendum victory more than three years ago has left him “hugely depressed”. He worries “desperately” about the consequences and admits that some will never forgive him.

But Mr Cameron, 52, argues that a changing EU meant that an “inevitable” referendum was already overdue by the time voters went to the polls on June 23, 2016, and that it was the “right approach”.

In his new book, serialised in The Times and The Sunday Times from today (Saturday), and in an interview, Mr Cameron:

■ Criticises Mr Johnson for removing the whip from Tory rebels and proroguing parliament.

■ Insists that a second Brexit vote should not be ruled out, calling a no-deal exit a “bad outcome”.

■ Defends austerity as a necessary “economic rescue job” that worked.

■ Admits that he regularly got “off his head” smoking cannabis on an island in the Thames while at Eton.

■ Reveals that he swore in front of the Queen at the prep school he attended with Prince Edward.

Mr Cameron, who has been heavily criticised for calling the referendum and then departing the scene, returns to the front line with both a defence and an apology.

He says that he has “many regrets” about the vote.

“From the timing of the vote to the expectations I allowed to build about the renegotiation, there are many things I would do differently.

“I did not fully anticipate the strength of feeling that would be unleashed both during the referendum and afterwards, and I am truly sorry to have seen the country I love so much suffer uncertainty and division in the years since then.

“But on the central question of whether it was right to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU and give people the chance to have their say on it, my view remains that this was the right approach to take.

“I believe that, particularly with the eurozone crisis, the organisation was changing before our very eyes, and our already precarious place in it was becoming harder to sustain. Renegotiating our position was my attempt to address that, and putting the outcome to a public vote was not just fair and not just overdue, but necessary and, I believe, ultimately inevitable.”

Mr Cameron writes that “there are those who will never forgive me for holding it, or for failing to deliver the outcome — Britain staying in a reformed EU — that I sought. I deeply regret the outcome and accept that my approach failed. The decisions I took contributed to that failure. I failed.”

In an interview published on Saturday he acknowledges that he has “robust exchanges” with people on the street over the “painful and difficult” consequences of the Brexit vote. Asked if has trouble sleeping he replies: “I worry about it a lot. Every single day I think about … the things that could have been done differently, and I worry about what is going to happen next.” The result left him “hugely depressed”.

Although initially claiming that he wants Mr Johnson to succeed, he says that the Conservative Prime Minister’s strategy appears to have “morphed” into something “quite different”.

“Taking the whip from [expelling] hard-working Conservative MPs and sharp practices using prorogation of parliament have rebounded. I didn’t support either of those things. Neither do I think a no-deal Brexit is a good idea.”

Mr Cameron suggests that Mr Johnson backed Brexit because he calculated it would do more to advance his political career.

He writes that he and present Cabinet minister Michael Gove behaved “appallingly” during the vote. “Over the issue of whether or not we had a veto over Turkey [accession to the EU] and over the issue of the £350 million on the bus, I think they left the truth at home.”

Although he compliments Mr Johnson’s “good work” as the mayor of London, he will add to questions over the Prime Minister’s competence by revealing that he was late to Cobra meetings after London riots.

He will also revive controversy over both men’s privileged background, and particularly their membership of the Bullingdon Club, by revealing new details of his initiation into the elite Oxford drinking society.

Mr Johnson may have been among a group “with one of them standing on the legs of an up-ended table, using a golf club to smash bottles as they were thrown at him”, he writes.

The former prime minister reserves his harshest criticism for Dominic Cummings, now Mr Johnson’s chief strategist, whom he accuses of spreading “poison”.

He reveals that he tired of Mr Gove’s “long sermons” at cabinet that ranged outside his brief. He blames Mr Cummings for turning Mr Gove against him after he had agreed to be moved from education to become chief whip.

He writes that he “totally flipped” after Mr Gove wrote an email refusing to be moved in 2014. “Reshuffles fall apart if people go back on their word. This was a job Michael had suggested, that he had accepted, that he had started to do. I rang him and said, ‘I don’t accept your email. You have agreed to do this job. I’ve told you everything we’re planning. I accept your withdrawal of the email, and I expect to speak to you later on today about how we are going to finalise the reshuffle.’ I followed this with a text: ‘You must realise that I divide the world into team players and wankers. You’ve always been a team player. Please don’t become a wanker.’”

Mr Johnson said on Friday that nothing in the book could affect his respect for Mr Cameron. Speaking in Rotherham, he said: “I want people to be clear, absolutely nothing that David Cameron says in his memoirs in the course of the next few days will diminish the affection and respect in which I hold him.”

The Times