At the dispatch box for the last time, David Cameron departed much as he had governed, off-hand, a little blase, with nothing memorable to say, nor even a ringing phrase. He will miss the roar of the crowd.

“Nothing is really impossible if you put your mind to it” was his final banality, as he bequeathed a score of impossible tasks left undone. Perhaps the man who sauntered effortlessly along a privileged path to the highest office never really tried hard enough, chillaxing and busking his way through six years.

Leaders don’t fall like kings in a Shakespearean bloodbath, but our democracy executes them pretty brutally nonetheless, with midnight removal vans instead of tumbrels. The Commons offered him words of polite farewell, but no note of genuine grief, affection or drama.

Cameron has led us into a state of uncertainty, at the mercy of negotiations with 27 countries over which we have no say

Peter Lilley, elder non-statesman, one of the caucus of Brexiteers who brought him and the country down, spoke of Cameron’s sense of duty, of his wit and grasp of detail at PMQs. This is, he claimed, a “tolerant, prosperous, fair and free country”. Irony? That’s not the nation revealed by the referendum vote, intolerant of foreigners, less prosperous and far too unfair to feel free for a great many.

Jeremy Corbyn struck a polite note too, with a good-natured joke about Cameron’s mother, rightly resisting any urge to kick the man on his way. But yet again he missed this pivotal moment to raise the great questions Cameron leaves unanswered. What is to become of us? Cameron has led us into a state of paralysing uncertainty, at the mercy of erratic negotiations with 27 countries over which we have no say. Take back control? Everything feels out of control. Ken Clarke paid Cameron a barbed compliment by asking him to remain as an active MP in the Commons: “As no two people know what Brexit means, we need his advice.” Of course he knows Cameron has no more clue than anyone else how put back together what his recklessness has broken apart. But the man had no referendum regrets: like Blair over Iraq, how could he admit that now?

No 10 ages people as if they’d been through a time machine, leaving them with less hair and more lines, florid and unhealthy after ceaseless decisions. How random is the ambition to aspire to this job, often driving insignificant people – not the best or the brightest. As Cameron goes, Ipsos Mori finds his approval rating particularly low, with only 28% satisfied with him, while Theresa May soars in, with 55% saying she “has what it takes”. People can invest all their disparate hopes in a new leader starting out. But many will be disappointed.

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Cameron leaves her an NHS in need of urgent treatment. Social care is keeling over, schools are short of teachers, councils are stricken by cuts, Sure Starts and local museums are closing: a long list of services are far worse off, with less money if Treasury receipts fall over the next years.

Behind May on the backbenches, Cameron leaves that malevolent phalanx of Brexiteers, the 84 so EU-phobic they preferred Andrea Leadsom to her – and they will seek to wreck her Brussels negotiations. Cameron should have learned that nothing ever appeases them, not even winning the referendum, with an energised Ukip at their back. May needs the steel he lacked to face them down, once and for all, or she risks going the way of Cameron to become the fourth Tory prime minister they have destroyed.