“Sometimes it feels like ten minutes, sometimes it feels like ten years,” David Cameron (right) told an audience of the two years that have elapsed since he stepped down as Prime Minister in 2016.
“Only a few months ago my daughter Florence said to me, ‘Daddy, when are we going home?’ ... but only a few weeks ago, she turned round and said, ‘Daddy, were you really prime minister?’”
Speaking at the launch of the Coalition for Global Prosperity, Cameron was more sanguine on the need to take populist complaints seriously. “It’s no good in response to the wave of populism we’ve seen around the world to just push away these arguments and not engage with them,” he said. “It’s no good saying to people, ‘You’re wrong to be concerned about high levels of immigration, just get used to it and understand what a benefit it is.’
“People want immigration control and expect governments to deliver on it.”
Among those listening were former Home Secretary Amber Rudd and Hilary Benn, backbench Labour MP and chair of the Brexit Committee. Boris Johnson was notably absent — hosting a party at the Institute of Directors.
The former PM continued: “It’s no good saying to people, ‘Well, you’ve just got to understand the beauties and wonders of free market economics,’ when people are very clear the economy is not working for everybody.”
He defended his government’s record in the rare speech, recorded by Politico. “We deal with it through programmes like the Government has done — minimum wages, better training, more apprenticeships. “You have to take on the causes of this populism and deal with these arguments, not wave them away.”
Cameron, who has been writing his memoirs in his “shepherd’s” hut in his garden at his home in Oxfordshire and keeping a low profile, added that he’s been mulling over “the things you got wrong, and the things you got right”.
The long-awaited memoirs, published by HarperCollins, will be out next year, according to a source.
