Please spare us Theresa May's tears over the Brexit result. She only has herself to blame

That a depth of feeling sufficient to summon forth tears in perhaps the least openly emotional front line politician this country has ever known, was suppressed so as not to alienate the 80,000 or so Brexit-loving reactionary pensioners that make up the Conservative party membership, is nothing less than tragic

It’s the morning of Thursday June 30 2016. A carefree Theresa May is launching her Tory leadership bid, jauntily firing out white hot banter about how, “the last time that Boris Johnson negotiated a deal with Europe he came back with three nearly new water cannon.”

In other parts of the capital, her rivals have already dragged the race towards its Quentin Tarantino-style bloodbath ending. There is, metaphorically speaking, claret everywhere. Things could hardly be going better.

It is somewhat surprising then, to learn that just six days earlier she was in tears. Weeping, according to a new biography by the not-prone-to-sensationalism author Anthony Seldon, over the nation’s vote to leave the European Union.

“The ones who voted for Brexit will be the ones who suffer the most,” she apparently told her former aide, Nick Timothy, whilst crying down the phone.

At least, this is what Nick Timothy says she did, and though we now know him to be the sort of chap who, had he been captain of the Titanic, would blame the iceberg, we have no reason not to trust his word on this. (Even if he would come to be found a touch wanting on the whole political strategy side around a year later.)

This, frankly, is remarkable news. Theresa May had been home secretary for six whole years by this point, and yet during the EU referendum campaign she was spotted in public about as often as Lord Lucan.

So vanishingly inconsequential was her contribution to the Remain campaign – a single speech, in which she spoke of the importance of the European Arrest Warrant – at the time, and since, she has been spoken of as a closet Brexiteer. At one point, before the brighter lights of Chris Grayling, Iain Duncan Smith and Priti Patel had made themselves available, she had even been spoken of as a potential leader of the Out campaign.

And yet, we now know, all this time she suffered in silence. Under pressure, apparently, from both sides – from David Cameron, to campaign for remain, and from Nick Timothy, to back Brexit.

Mr Seldon only specifies that the teary call took place when she learned of the vote. It is not clear whether this happened before or after 8.30am the next day, when David Cameron resigned as prime minister and she somehow managed, in the coming days, to turn that frown upside down.

“Ultimately, she saw Brexit as a damage-limitation exercise for those she thought would lose out, rather than what it could and should have been: a positive opportunity for a new start for Britain,” says Timothy, a chap who certainly knows a thing or two about how to re-badge unmitigated disasters as “positive opportunities”, having caused more than his fair share of them.

Seldon also says that, according to Timothy, the only big opportunity she saw in Brexit was the opportunity to cut immigration, which had been her obsession while home secretary. That meant taking the single most damaging course of economic action, leaving the single market. It also means that the tears she apparently she shed for the poor unfortunates whose lives would be ruined by Brexit, she also took it upon herself to make a whole lot worse, but that is a matter for another day.

What it really sheds light on is another new way in which, with hindsight, David Cameron was crushingly naive.

He was, undeniably, we now know, naive to go in to the 2015 general election, promising an In/Out referendum on membership of the EU. It might have won him a parliamentary majority – who knows – but given he was out of the job in near unprecedented disgrace a year later, it probably wasn’t worth it.

But he was also clearly more naive than anyone realised at the time to promise both an EU referendum, AND to stand down before the 2020 general election.

That the most important decision the people of the United Kingdom have ever been asked to take was shot though and generally mutated with low-grade power games in the next Tory leadership contest is a given. Boris “two speeches” Johnson alone is testament to that.

But the fact that Theresa May evidently felt compelled to play almost no part in such a huge political event, then cried when the outcome that didn’t go her way, is remarkable new evidence of what a truly abysmal episode it was.

That a depth of feeling sufficient to summon forth tears in perhaps the least openly emotional front line politician this country has ever known, was suppressed so as not to alienate the 80,000 or so Brexit-loving reactionary pensioners that make up the Conservative party membership, is nothing less than tragic.

It is a damning indictment on her of course. But it is a damning indictment on Cameron too, and the Conservative Party, and Brexit, the rolling perma-disaster that is now so wildly out of control.