Brexit will be seen as David Cameron’s greatest gift to Britain as Prime Minister

HOW will history judge David Cameron after ten years as Tory leader, six in Downing Street and just one as Prime Minister in his own right?

On the plus side, UK growth is the best in Europe, inflation is low and we are the world’s fifth-largest economy.

Under Mr Cameron’s premiership Britain has experienced a jobs miracle, with unemployment half the European average – a magnet for millions of migrants.

But all prime ministers make mistakes – and Mr Cameron’s began in Opposition, when he vowed to be the “heir to Blair”.

Along with George Osborne he worshipped the charismatic former Labour PM and his unique selling point – being all things to all men.

But while copying Blair, Mr Cameron abandoned his party’s own hero. There were no votes in Thatcherism, he decided.

In 2005, the global economy was in trouble. Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne either failed to notice or ignored the signals. Instead they signed up to Gordon Brown’s spending frenzy, ruling out “unfunded tax cuts” while promising equally unfunded borrowing.

Many in the Tory party believe these unforced errors cost Mr Cameron outright victory in 2010, when voters could find little to choose between the parties.

In Coalition, he was stopped by Nick Clegg from sorting out the nation’s finances. Today, far from being in credit, the country still borrows every penny it spends, with a £75BILLION overdraft and national debt at £1.7TRILLION. Other mistakes? If the NHS is Britain’s sacred cow, Mr Cameron came as close as Tony Blair did to slaughtering it. Labour squandered billions while bringing it to the brink of ruin. The “heir to Blair’’ followed suit, wasting £3BILLLION on an incomprehensible shake-up.

It crashed in flames and is still causing chaos.

Mr Cameron followed his leader into other scrapes – Libya the biggest. Having learned little from the shambles in Iraq, he ordered British forces to topple Colonel Gaddafi, turning the country into yet another failed Arab state. Yet, just like Blair, he says he’d do it all again.

There were plenty more errors, forced and unforced, including failure to build a crucial third runway at Heathrow while wasting £30billion on a high-speed rail link which could be better used sorting out our clogged roads.

Mr Cameron had a tendency to knee-jerk in moments of crisis. So we saw the disastrous Leveson witch-hunt and the abortive £40million Old Bailey trials of dozens of innocent journalists.

His “green” phase is costing every householder hundreds of pounds a year on energy bills without any impact on global warming.

Some will say the biggest blunder was last month’s EU referendum. On the contrary. It was career-ending for the PM, but just like Black Wednesday turned into

Golden Wednesday after we ditched plans for the euro, so Independence Day 2016 will be seen – perhaps by Cameron himself one day – as his greatest gift to Britain as Prime Minister.