The legacy of former prime minister David Cameron and the future prospects of Liberal Democrats’ leader Jo Swinson were on the agenda in the leader columns of the Sunday papers. Here is the pick of yesterday’s opinions.
The Sunday Times
The paper championed gaining exclusive extracts from Mr Cameron’s memoirs in which there was criticism for Boris Johnson for backing Leave “to help his political career”, with the ex-PM describing Cabinet minister Michael Gove as a “foam-flecked Faragist”. The pair were “ambassadors for the expert-trashing, truth-twisting age of populism”, Mr Cameron wrote.
But the paper’s editorial says that while it is “natural he is now hitting out at his former friends and colleagues... he has only himself to blame”.
It was Mr Cameron who decided to have a referendum over continued membership of the EU and then when Brexit was victorious in 2016, stepped down.
It was not the result he assured other EU leaders he would get, the Sunday Times said.
“The EU referendum is not Mr Cameron’s only legacy, but it sums up his defects in office: a politician who always thought he could wing it by swotting up at the last minute when serious and sustained application was needed,” said the editorial.
“Many millions of people, it should be said, are grateful Mr Cameron accidentally gave this country the Brexit they had long craved. They will not thank him, however, for the chaos left in his wake.
The Mail On Sunday
There was little sympathy for Mr Cameron in its editorial, in which the former PM is accused of failure “at any stage” to realise “just how little he knew of the world outside his own magic circle”.
The leader stated: “And so, when he was wafted into office on a cloud of skilful public relations and little else, he lightly dismissed the huge, unavoidable European issue as a boring diversion about which people should stop ‘banging on’. And this was why it caught him in its talons and tore him apart.
“What do we learn from this? That there has been for many years a type of politician in this country – in all major parties – who has sneered at what he did not understand.
“The era when such people could claim to rule us by effortless superiority has gone, for it turns out they were only lucky, not clever. The EU crisis swept that away.”
The Observer
As the Liberal Democrats’ autumn conference got under way at Bournemouth, Andrew Rawnsley, the paper’s chief political commentator, examined Ms Swinson’s credentials to transform the party’s fortunes with the voters.
He believed she is “still a blank page” fot most of the electorate and that the LibDems’ fortunes will rely on how she performs on the election campaign trail and “no one can be sure about that until she is put to the test”.
The former Tory universities minister Sam Gyimah is the latest to switch to the Liberal Democrats, which, Mr Rawnsley said, would “embolden optimistic LibDems to think that we are on the cusp of a big realignment of our politics, the breaking of the blue-red duopoly that has controlled Britain for decades”.
He added: “The allegiance-smashing forces unleashed by Brexit certainly seem to have created the most promising outlook in decades. Ms Swinson likes to think so, saying ‘the faultline in British politics is no longer a left-right divide... now [it] is between liberal and authoritarian values’.
“I am old enough to recall Paddy Ashdown saying similar things back in the 1990s, only for the big old beasts of blue and red to recover and reassert their dominance. The truth is we just don’t know yet.”
The Independent
It believes Ms Swinson’s call to her party to commit to revoking Article 50 was possibly “more of a statement of intent – an opening bid in inter-party negotiations in a hung parliament”.
The online paper’s leader believes a new referendum “is the only way” to reverse the 2016 vote.
“That referendum could take place before a general election, as Tony Blair, Mr Watson and others have argued. It may be that Mr Johnson, if he fails to take Britain out of the EU at the end of next month, would rather have a referendum than fight an election with Nigel Farage on his back.
“But if there is an election, all Remainers in all parties should be as united as possible in using that election to obtain a Final Say referendum.
“That will mean parties working together in unprecedented ways.”
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