The worst Prime Minister since…? Chamberlain?
Go back a year, and it must have seemed so different, the first Tory leader to have an absolute majority for 18 years! Since then, his legacy has been defined by failure in the EU referendum and the image of him sticking his dick in a pig's head.
The first was totally unnecessary, a promise he never expected to have to keep. Having made it, and unexpectedly ended up in a position to have to follow through, there were so many things he could have done:
* Ensure that a majority of the countries of the United Kingdom would have to vote against continuing membership before any exit would be considered – two of them have European commitments built into their devolution deals! Having English voters annoyed at voters in Scotland and Northern Ireland is nothing new, and builds support for the 'English votes for English laws' idea*
* Explicitly give the electorate multiple 'leave' options rather than bundle them together in a single campaign: stay a member of the single market regardless of free movement or stop free movement at the cost of being a member of the single market or…
* Tie up his 'friends' into working for 'remain', rather than discovering after he'd called it that several of them were prepared to campaign for 'leave' in order to maximise their chances of replacing him
.. instead, he displayed a level of incompetence in political management so great, it almost makes Corbyn look good.
By resigning as an MP now, he's going to cost Oxfordshire council the money to run the by-election (although doubtless the constituency will get a boost from a small pile of journalists etc coming to cover it) and doubtless cost a bunch of schoolchildren a day of school. I don't know what will happen with the area's constituencies following the forthcoming boundary changes, but it's likely that it will create more problems for the Tories than it would if he were to step down at the next General Election – his replacement will be amongst those trying to ensure they're still an MP.
What a complete Cameron.
* Which is a bad one as proposed for a number of reasons, but it's his policy.