Tuesday 15 November 2011

Can Cameron be like Maggie?

Comparisons are being made between Maggie and Cameron with Maggie seen as someone who had a definite idea about where she wanted to take the country (i.e. out of the gentle decline into oblivion which we were told by her predecessors of left and right was inevitable) but with Cameron seen as someone who wants to carry out policies which are more or less uncontroversial as he likes to be liked. The view of Cameron from abroad as expressed to me by one or two continentals is of a lightweight. Take the EU for example. Cameron says he is a eurosceptic but is he? It is abundantly clear that the founders of the EU  always saw it ending up as a sovereign state - the United States of Europe - and would get there by hook or by crook, mostly by crook as far as most of us in this country can see. You can have treaties with an independent state but you can't be half in and half out of one. The only reasonable stance you can take is to leave the EU and to have an arrangement with it similar to the one Switzerland has. Cameron can utter platitudes about repatriating powers as he did at the Mansion House yesterday evening but it is clear that Merkel has a completely different agenda in mind which again makes it more than likely that we will have to leave the EU. There are of course advantages in leaving the EU including not having to make any payments or following the ridiculous climate change dictats and other crazy regulations, straight bananas and the like. If Cameron wants to be a great Prime Minister he needs to be a little bit more like Maggie and have a real idea about where he wants this country to be in ten years time.      

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