Former prime minister David Cameron has admitted that he is "truly sorry" for the division and uncertainty that has been created in the aftermath of the 2016 EU referendum.

In an interview with The Times, Cameron, who is due to publish his memoirs next week, the ex-Tory admitted that a referendum on the UK's "EU status was the right approach to take" but had "underestimated" what would come next.

Cameron said that the result of the vote left him "hugely depressed" and that he thinks things could have been done differently "every single day."

From the timing of the vote to the expectations I allowed to build about the renegotiation, there are many things I would do differently,

I did not fully anticipate the strength of feeling that would be unleashed both during the referendum and afterwards, and I am truly sorry to have seen the country I love so much suffer uncertainty and division in the years since then.

But on the central question of whether it was right to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU and give people the chance to have their say on it, my view remains that this was the right approach to take.

There are those who will never forgive me for holding it, or for failing to deliver the outcome - Britain staying in a reformed EU - that I sought. I deeply regret the outcome and accept that my approach failed. The decisions I took contributed to that failure. I failed.

Whether this is Cameron's attempt at some sort of sympathy or just a chance to get a few things off of his chest is almost beside the point as he was the person who resigned literally the day after the referendum.

Cameron's outpouring of regret hasn't exactly endeared him anymore to the public who have been more than happy to pile on even more misery for the ex-PM in the form of jokes and jibes on Twitter.

Elsewhere in the interview Cameron also criticised the current prime minister, Boris Johnson, lamenting his decision to suspend parliament and sack 21 Tory MPs who recently voted against the government, leaving him without a working majority.

Speaking at an event in Rotherham on Friday, Johnson responded by saying:

I want people to be clear, absolutely nothing that David Cameron says in his memoirs in the course of the next few days will diminish the affection and respect in which I hold him.

HT Politics Home

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