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He may have landed his country in the soup, then walked away. (And yes, he was humming, whatever the excuses he may now offer.) He may have provoked the Palace into an unprecedented rebuke
by being indiscreet about his dealings with the Queen. But David Cameron has a book to sell. He may have broken the constitutional convention that conversations between the Prime Minister
and the monarch are never revealed, when he boasted to the billionaire Mayor of New York that the Queen was “purring down the phone” after the result of the Scottish referendum. He should
have learned his lesson then, after the Queen made her displeasure informally known. That convention has its origins in the days when the Privy Council really was “privy” and to reveal royal
secrets was high treason. It still matters today, because on it depends the relationship of trust between the head of the Government and the head of state. David Cameron, however, has a
book to sell. He may have decided that the best way to spice up sales of a dull-ish memoir was to trash the constitution. He knows that in America, bringing the Queen into his own
psychodrama would transform a book otherwise destined for the remainder pile into an up-to-date episode of The Crown. He chose to break the confidence of the most private public person in
the world in a television documentary, purely to oil the wheels of the post-publication publicity machine. He did so in cahoots with the BBC, a public broadcasting corporation established by
royal charter, confident that they could ignite a firestorm that would be mutually beneficial. After all, David Cameron has a book to sell. He might have admitted that he had said “a little
too much” by telling the BBC that he had begged the Queen’s Private Secretary to ask Her Majesty for the “raising of an eyebrow” to quell the “mounting sense of panic” in the summer of 2014
that Scotland might vote for independence. The Queen then told a member of the public outside the church at Balmoral that Scots should “think very carefully” about what they were doing. By
telling the world that she had deliberately intervened in the referendum at his behest, he has disregarded the solemn warning of Walter Bagehot in The English Constitution: “We must not let
in daylight upon magic. We must not bring the Queen into the combat of politics, or she will cease to be reverenced by all combatants; she will become one combatant among many.” Sure enough,
the reaction among Scottish Nationalists to the former Prime Minister’s indiscretion has been to question the impartiality of the “Queen of Scots”. Even the former First Minister and SNP
leader at the time, Alex Salmond — whose own reputation has evaporated in the meantime, as he awaits trial on serious criminal charges — now feels entitled to sneer at “the machinations of
the Westminster establishment”. In Scotland, the Union and the monarchy sink or swim together; both have been damaged. Never ye mind, laddie: David Cameron has a book to sell. Now the
precedent has been set, of setting prime ministerial self-promotion above the privacy of the monarch, why should the Queen bother to give her chief minister the benefit of her wisdom? Within
minutes of kissing hands at Buckingham Palace, the present incumbent of 10 Downing Street was blabbing to his staff that the Queen had told him: “I don’t know why anyone would want the
job.” It was a harmless pleasantry, but not inconsequential: the Palace immediately rapped Boris Johnson over the knuckles. He has watched his step more carefully since. But what if he were
to bolster his case by revealing the Queen’s views on Brexit and on the prorogation of Parliament? How would that differ, except in timing, from the conduct of the last Prime Minister but
one? It might be fatal to the monarchy, but Johnson could justify himself by claiming that he was trying to execute the democratic will of the people. David Cameron merely has a book to
sell. We now have the spectacle of the Supreme Court being asked to intuit the motives of the Prime Minister in seeking to prorogue Parliament. The plaintiffs are asserting, in effect, that
Boris Johnson lied to the Queen. This attempt to enforce judicial review of the relationship between the two principal pillars of state has caused alarm in the Palace. In effect, the court
is deciding whether to use the blunt instrument of the law to let in daylight on magic. A verdict that this prorogation was unlawful would not only make the Prime Minister look like a
scoundrel: it would make the Queen at best his dupe, at worst his accomplice. In the ensuing crisis, who could blame her for taking the opportunity to abdicate? That would be good news only
for republicans, including Jeremy Corbyn. Oh, and David Cameron has a book to sell.