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The Return of David Cameron

Cameron at No 10 on BBCHe’s been gone five minutes, and already he’s poised for a comeback. According to The Indy, David Cameron is Theresa May’s nomination for the next NATO general secretary. This, according to Michael Fallon, is part of a move that would deepen Britain’s commitment to the alliance to make up for Brexit. Presumably that would involve an extra spending commitment. After all, ways have to be found for blowing that phantom Leave dividend.

A Briton has held the secretary generalship on three occasions. The last was George Robertson who, according to rumour, was placed there by His Blairness to avoid newspaper attention. The position is granted by a consensus among member states and, typically, the candidate who can win US backing gets in. There are some things that commend Dave for this role. NATO secretary general is a bit of a non-job. It involves fronting the alliance to the press, chairs a number of committees and some staff management duties, which can easily get palmed off on the deputy. Given Dave’s recklessness, we should be grateful it has no decision-making powers. For someone who never did detail and whose only talent was was to look the part, Dave would fit this job like a snake slipping into a sack. Trotting about the world stage and looking ever-so-important, it’s enough to bring the green eyes out in Tony Blair.

There are some issues though. As the strongest and most sophisticated military power in NATO after the United States, he might be a shoe-in. But then again, politics could get in the way. The EU is separate, but politics always overspills. Only fool liberals think it respects institutional boundaries. In the five months since Theresa May entered Downing Street, her foreign secretary has spent his time swaggering around Europe insulting allies and stupidly snubbing meetings of his continental counterparts. Not the most auspicious start to a campaign of glad handing if May is to get her man in position. Then there’s the unforeseen fall out from Brexit negotiations. No one yet knows how smooth or bumpy they’re going to be, but at some point they will involve frank exchanges, frayed tempers, unreasonable behaviours, and perhaps the odd falling out. Some of which are bound to affect Dave’s chances.

The nomination also says a few things about the Prime Minister’s nous deficiency. She might have concluded that giving Dave a grace and favour job will prevent him being a future annoyance, a la Blair’s tendency to repeat. But, excuse me, was May so buried in the Home Office that she didn’t notice what was going on during the last six years? Her then boss time and again scored cheap populist points for short-term gain, alternately acting like a petulant brat and then pleading for special treatment and, by losing the referendum, has exacerbated the crisis tendencies in the EU project. Only Nigel Farage would be less acceptable, politically speaking. Plenty of commentators have talked up the differences between May and Dave, but they have one thing in common: all plays second fiddle to the immediate interests of the Conservative Party.

Whether Dave is able to waltz into this plum job or not remains to be seen, but it appears the politics are against him. And as, once again, it demonstrates May’s cluelessness, this most unwelcome of Christmas time surprises doesn’t bode well for her oversight and direction of the Brexit negotiations.

6 Comments

  1. Rob Green says:

    Now at the Yanks are collapsing Pax Americana and no longer give a shit about NATO the clapped out British imperialists see an opportunity to take the lead in this disintegrating alliance and do a bit of dividing and ruling now that they’ve been kicked out of the European Market. But NATO will go the way of the EU. Europe is already visibly dividing along the old geo-political fault lines. But history is nothing if not ironic. This time it will be fascist Britain, France and Russia against democratic Germany and her allies with a fascist America coming in late to ensure the victory of neo-barbarism and a New Dark Ages. The US elites already think `two world wars made us great, a third will make us great again’. They no longer have a functioning economic system to underpin their rule leaving violence as the only available policy instrument to prop up their leech rule.

    1. Karl Stewart says:

      Is that the first cuckoo of spring?

      1. Rob Green says:

        No but that’s a centrist c**t.

  2. Tony says:

    Worth bearing in mind here is his admission that nuclear deterrence is nothing more than a theory.

    Here is the quote:

    “All our political lives we have been nurtured on the theory of nuclear deterrence.”

    —-David Cameron
    “Call Me Dave” by Michael Ashcroft and Isabel Oakeshott, p169 (my emphasis).

    So there we have it, the entire future of life on this planet hangs on nothing more than a theory!

  3. James Martin says:

    NATO General Secretaries have in recent decades gone, more often than not, to right-wing social democrats (including Labour with that pompous eejit George Robertson). This is no accident of course, the role of transatlantic links via groups like NATO and a host of other economic, political and labour-movement linked bodies (e.g., TUCETU), most of which have very rich government or very often spook linked funding, is seen as key for keeping the left in check. Indeed, Blair and Mandelsons ‘Project’ itself grew out of and continued to be linked with the British American Project with shared aims such as pro-US military imperialism, pro-nukes and the desire to crush and discredit groups like CND and opposition to rank and file worker and socialist movements.

    And with all that history, with all those links and with all those dangers for the left there is still a remarkable shyness in addressing NATO. In fact there is even a remarkable level of support for a dangerous organisation that should be opposed on principle by all socialists.

    But this week has seen something else even more remarkable. A ‘retired’ (if such a thing is possible) senior MI6 operative working with retired senior British diplomats in the latest ‘dodgy dossier’ to emerge from the laughably termed ‘intelligence community’ and which involved meetings with the likes of John McCain in a neutral country to pass on the information (and no doubt arrange leak dates). It doesn’t really matter whether the sex stories about Trump are true or not, there are far more worrying issues concerning that dangerous individual than his love or otherwise for golden showers from high class hookers. But the fact that this involved the UK in what would appear to have been an attempted (and possibly still possible) coup d’etat against an American President elect (the UK role is for now the Americans seem strangely to be ignoring, publicly at least) as opposed to their normal targets of militant trade union leaders, socialists and Third World tin pot dictators, makes the future of NATO even more of a live issue. Somehow the left must cut through the war between sections of the western ruling class (which the battle between Trump and the spook agencies is for now the visible manifestation) and argue for genuine socialist internationalism rather than continuing to allow Labour to be tied to US imperialism.

  4. Chris says:

    Considering his foreign policy record, that’d be like making Al Capone head of the FBI.

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