Diary
Cameron makes two gaffes in 24 hours
22 July, 2010
David Cameron has made two tremendous gaffes in the space of 24 hours, which is impressive by the standards of any Prime Minister. His first was over the fraught issue of Afghanistan, where he stated that British troops would leave the country by 2015 while insisting that this could only happen if the job was done. But which is it? There is naturally no guarantee that Afghan forces will be competent to take over from NATO in five years time. So either British forces make a hasty and ill advised retreat or Cameron’s pledge is a hollow one. This mixed message can only undermine our forces and give much needed succour to the enemy. It is a recipe for policy confusion at the highest level.
Cameron’s second gaffe was his breathtakingly ignorant comment that Britain’s wartime role in 1940 was as a “junior partner” to the USA. He said this in the context of discussing the ‘special relationship’ where he affirmed that it was important to ‘tell it like it is.’ “We are a very effective partner of the US, but we are the junior partner,” he told Sky News. Now it is one thing to make a political statement of the obvious, albeit one devoid of warmth and sentimentality, and entirely another to re-write history.
Perhaps someone should remind the PM that in 1940, Britain stood alone against Nazism while American was isolationist. It was a year in which a British Prime Minister sought in vain to obtain America’s entry into the war or at least some level of financial assistance. America was nobody’s junior partner that year while Britain was the effective superpower.
Cameron’s comment will offend all those that remember 1940 with unashamed pride. He should apologise for this. Yet it is intriguing that he should make such a mistake in the first place. Does it not say something that an incredibly well educated man could make such a gross blunder? Does Cameron not realise the sacrosanct status of this year in British national identity? Or does he believe, like Tony Blair, that Britain is merely a young country and that its revered national mythologies matter very little today? Perhaps he was so desperate to emphasise our junior status vis the US that he retrospectively applied it to the past. Whatever the reason, his gaffe was revealing.
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