Letters: David Cameron’s real referendum mistake

Cameron’s fatal error

Sir: Jo Johnson’s otherwise informative review of David Cameron’s For the Record (Books, 12 October) suggests Cameron’s ‘mistake’ was to not call the referendum earlier, and his ‘fatal error’ was his failure to nail down the Leave campaign on how they ‘would actually deliver Brexit’.

Not so. Cameron’s mistake was to assume the referendum would produce a Remain result. Cameron’s fatal error was to have taken sides in the referendum. Had he not taken sides, had he not allowed George Osborne to launch ‘Project Fear’, and had he encouraged the dissemination of practical information for both the Leave and the Remain sides, then after the result he would have been able to initiate a workable withdrawal in an orderly way. Cameron should have admitted his error in backing the losing side, got on with his job and taken the country forward.

There would have been no need for the tenure of Theresa May; there would have been no need for a general election in 2017 — and we would not be where we are now.
Hugh Nowlan

Frome, Somerset

We were not a head of state

Sir: Philip Hensher refers to Margaret Thatcher as a ‘head of state’ (Books, 19 October). No. Our head of state is Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Margaret Thatcher may have begun to think of herself as such (‘We are a grandmother’). But she wasn’t.
Iain McCoubrey

Letcombe Regis, Oxon

Measure for measure

Sir: I suppose it was foolish of me to hope that an increasingly metricated Spectator might resist the relentless drive to make us adapt to the chilly and inhuman Jacobin measurement system. In the end, I suppose, the last hundredweight will be strangled with the intestines of the last furlong, and that will be that.