"Dear Mr Cameron,
As you know, you are responsible for the most disastrous development in the UK’s political and economic history since 1945. Your error has been far more serious than Eden’s at Suez. His foray into latter-day gunboat diplomacy failed to achieve its own objectives and accelerated the loss of Empire, but it did not pose the existential threat to the UK’s future that your Brexit does.
Your error has been much more egregious. Eden failed in 1956 to understand how Britain’s strategic position had changed, but you were much better informed. You understood the strategic position very well. You knew that Britain’s continued membership of the EU was clearly the best way to maximise the country’s economic and political interests in Europe and the world.
You gambled that a referendum on EU membership would produce a Remain outcome, when any competent political analyst could have told you (and perhaps some did) that UK public support for the EU was moved strongly by external “shocks” such as Maastricht and the 2007-8 credit crunch.
Those analysts would also have told you that it was sheer folly to call a referendum, when the EU itself was suffering from the continuing effects of the euro crisis and the world’s worst refugee crisis since World War II.
They would have pointed out that leading politicians (including you on occasion) have been bad-mouthing the EU for more than 30 years, and that the popular press has show similar contempt. You should have realised that the probability of losing the referendum was much higher in 2016 than it had been in 1975 – and that far, far, more was at stake.
I will resist the temptation to ask you what on Earth you thought you were doing. I know that you were following through on a manifesto commitment to hold a referendum (designed to preserve Conservative Party unity). I appreciate that it’s possible you thought you would never have to deliver on that commitment because you believed the outcome of the 2015 general election would be a second Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government, which would allow you to jettison your pledge. I also understand why you felt obliged, as a good democrat responding to the will of the people, to follow through on a manifesto commitment once elected."
Rest of his letter:
http://theconversation.com/letter-to-david-cameron-split-your-party-and-start-a-new-one-to-save-britain-61893
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