The Strange Resilience Of David Cameron

Tally up the disasters: the loss to UKIP and Labour in the European elections; the embarrassment of having hired criminal phone-hacker Andy Coulson for Number 10; a doomed campaign to stop the incoming president of the European Commission; a looming end to the UK with Scotland’s impending referendum on independence; and a favorability rating of 35 percent (behind UKIP’s Nigel Farage at 36 percent).

And yet … he has a little spring in his step, thanks to:

the very public implosion of [Opposition leader] Ed Miliband. Yesterday, at Prime Ministers Questions, Miliband had the opportunity to humiliate David Cameron over the Coulson conviction. Instead, he ended up humiliating himself. “As the Tory benches cheered and their Labour counterparts grimaced, the wind left Miliband’s sails. After this right hook, Miliband’s technical queries on the civil service could not help sounding flat. Against expectations, Cameron ended the session on top,” reported that fanatical right-wing scandal sheet the New Statesman. Although the Statesman actually got it wrong. The problem for Miliband is that when Cameron came out on top it surprised precisely no one.

Then there’s a shift in mood since the Tories were able to avoid catastrophe in the recent local and European elections, and Labour looked much more wobbly than expected. And a Tory prime minister’s usual foes – his own backbenchers – are quiescent, if only because they see both a potential victory next year but more important a referendum on Britain (sans Scotland, perhaps) leaving the EU. In that Cameron’s failure to stop Carl Juncker winning the European Commission actually helps him in the long run – because it is likely to make the EU even less popular in Britain than it now is. Clive Crook is (rightly) worried:

Cameron’s difficulties over Europe are rapidly compounding. His position requires him to argue that Europe is reformable; Europe is telling the world it isn’t. How many of these rebuffs can Cameron absorb before he has to acknowledge that the U.K.’s choice is not between a new, less centralized union and divorce, but between divorce and the union as it is (only more so)? In effect, he’s already cast aside the argument that Britain has a compelling interest in remaining an EU member on almost any terms. If he believed that, he wouldn’t have promised a referendum in the first place.

Not so long ago, it was unimaginable that Scotland would leave the UK and that the UK would leave the EU. I still think the odds are slightly against both, but no one should bet on it. In which case, perhaps Cameron could survive … but the very structure of the country he governs fundamentally come apart.

(Photo: British Prime Minister David Cameron leaves 10 Downing Street in London on 18 June, 2014. By Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images.)