Why should I do all the hard s**t for someone else, just to hand it over to them on a plate?

Cameron’s plan seemed so admirable; clearly he had been intending to leave on his own terms. Instead, just weeks later, he found that he had accidentally taken Britain out of the European Union in a referendum he had held merely to try to solve a problem with his own party. The Sun reported that the prime minister had told his inner circle, ‘Why should I do all the hard s**t for someone else, just to hand it over to them on a plate?’ It’s a sentiment that most people might share when faced with something as colossal as the Brexit negotiations when they had never intended for there to be a Brexit in the first place. The difference with Cameron was that he had seemed so committed to doing the ‘hard s**t’ until he realised what it might entail. Theresa May, on the other hand, fatally wounded after the snap election she had chosen to call, and which had deprived her of her Commons majority, told her MPs, ‘I got us into this mess and I’ll get us out of it.’ She promised the 1922 Committee, meeting on the first day the Commons returned after the election result, that ‘I will serve you as long as you want me.’ Quite a contrast to Cameron’s desire to serve for as long as he wanted.

I. Hardman, Why we get the wrong politicians (2018), 175