
David Cameron announced on Friday he would step down as Conservative Party leader and prime minister in the autumn after losing a referendum on Britain’s European Union membership.
Since Cameron campaigned fiercely for Britain to stay in the EU, the 52-percent vote to leave made his position untenable.
His resignation is a huge loss. Cameron led the Conservatives to two election victories by making the right appealing to voters in the center again. His successor is likely to be more reactionary and will anyway be in thrall to the Euroskeptics for whom the outcome of the referendum is a vindication.
It’s unlikely to hurt the Conservatives in the short term, given that Labour has taken a holiday from electability under Jeremy Corbyn. But if and when they get their act together (and two parliamentarians have already called for a confidence vote in Corbyn), it’s the Conservatives, if indeed they repudiate the Cameron line, who will lose out. Read more “Cameron’s Resignation the End of a Project”