There was at least a symmetry in seeing David Cameron do to himself what he had done to the country. This was Dave’s worst nightmare. It wasn’t his involvement with Greensill Capital – Sam had always told him never to trust a man who calls himself Lex – that he minded being picked over. Though God knows that was bad enough. What was hardest to bear was having his neediness exposed. The 56 phone calls, texts, emails and WhatsApps: each one increasingly desperate. The man who couldn’t take no for an answer. Call me, Dave. Cameron had begun his two-and-a-half-hour session before the Treasury select committee with a written statement. Something designed to mitigate the criticism that he knew was incoming. He wasn’t a bad man, he said, looking thoroughly embarrassed and wishing he was anywhere but on the end of this Zoom call. He had always abided by the rules. He was just a former prime minister with too much time on his hands. He had written his memoirs that almost no one had read and had then had a sinking feeling that he was all washed up at 51. So when Lex had suggested he come and work for his bank as an adviser, he had jumped at the chance. It had given him a renewed sense of purpose. All he had ever wanted to do was to help people. To do good. Even now he found it painfully hard to believe that he had been duped into working for an uninsurable bank that had lent money on phantom invoices. The pain was only just beginning, though. The Tory chair, Mel Stride, tried to nail Cameron down on some simple basics. Like what his actual job description was. Dave wasn’t a director of the bank, but he did seem to have been invited to attend a considerable number of board meetings. Didn’t Dave find this odd? He didn’t. But nor was he keen to be seen as a lobbyist. Rather he was just a guardian angel who understood how fintech companies, such as Greensill, could help the country through the economic shock of the pandemic, and saw it as his mission to pass on the good news to the government. OK, said Stride slowly. So what was Cameron’s financial arrangement with Greensill? If it was just a few grand then it might be easier to see his work as an act of altruism. Dave reddened and his face developed a sweaty sheen. “I was paid generously and I had shares,” he mumbled. Repeated attempts to find out just how generous his remuneration package was, were dead-batted. One got the distinct impression that he was scooping up about £1m a year even before share options were taken into account. From there on, Cameron lurched from one car crash to another. He signed off his texts as “Love, DC” to loads of people. Including the top Treasury civil servant, Tom Scholar, whom he had only met twice in the past three years. Though interestingly not to Rishi Sunak or Michael Gove. His spell check had been to blame for his message about not understanding why interest rates had been cut during the pandemic. Mysteriously, the “not” bit had just chosen to insert itself into his message. Dave had just one story, to which he determinedly stuck. Though one laced with contradictions. His 56 separate interventions to the government had not been disproportionate and a waste of everyone’s time during the pandemic. Rather they were a sign of just how passionate he was about supply chain finance and how stupid the Treasury and its advisers were not to take advantage of it. Nor was it his fault that Greensill had gone bankrupt. Everything had seemed just tickety-boo when he had been travelling on private jets at the company’s expense.
Dave had not been undone by Greensill. He had been undone by himself. His chilled-out attitude combined with his desperation to get away from his shepherd’s hut had meant he had never bothered to ask himself if Greensill was just too good to be true. What Lord Myners had considered a Ponzi scheme, Dave had seen as a sound investment. He had believed what he had needed to believe. Because the alternative – that he was merely being pimped out to give Greensill a way into government money that would otherwise have been closed off – was unthinkable. Though it was equally unbearable to realise that he was the world’s worst lobbyist: all those messages and nothing to show for them. Here was Cameron laid bare. A ball of need looking for meaning and affirmation. But finding only contempt. He had failed at everything. As prime minister he had promised to put an end to the “who you know” lobbying culture and he had ended up as the very thing he had most despised. “It gives me no pleasure to say this,” Labour’s Rushanara Ali concluded, trying to conceal a grin. “But your reputation is in tatters.” Which took quite some doing given that he hadn’t had much of a reputation anyway. The Guardian at 200: join John Crace and Marina Hyde in conversation with Anushka Asthana as part of our digital festival on Tuesday 8 June. Book tickets here