As opposition leader, David Cameron was often portrayed as a smooth public relations man, always on message and good on television.
As prime minister of Britain, he is turning out to be rather less predictable.
In the past two weeks, Cameron has angered Pakistan by suggesting it “promotes the export of terror”, offended Israel by comparing Gaza to a “prison camp” and mistakenly said that Iran “has got a nuclear bomb”.
The remark on Gaza was scripted, the one on Pakistan was not, though Cameron has stood by it. Both were made during foreign trips. The comment on Iran was a brief slip during a televised question-and-answer session with British voters.
What all the remarks had in common was that they were unexpectedly blunt.
“It is somewhat out of keeping with the David Cameron that we know, because normally he’s a pretty controlled performer,” said Tim Bale, author of a recent book on Cameron’s Conservative Party and senior politics lecturer at Sussex University.
“Normally, if he’s going to talk straight to people it’s in private, while in public he’s got a much more emollient, carefully crafted style,” Bale said.
The opposition Labour Party was quick to brand Cameron a foreign policy “klutz” after his Iran gaffe, while supporters have welcomed his frank talk as a breath of fresh air in the normally bland arena of diplomacy.
Critics and fans have both cited inexperience on the world stage as a possible reason for Cameron’s newly outspoken style.
At 43, the former public relations executive is Britain’s youngest prime minister for close to 200 years. He has only been in the job since May 11 and had previously shown little interest in foreign affairs.
But in the past week, he also set off a domestic row by saying during another unscripted question-and-answer session that people who were granted cheap subsidised housing should have it for a fixed term, not for life as is the case now.
A politically explosive suggestion in Britain, this had not previously been flagged as government policy. It angered his coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, who would oppose it.
Francis Elliott, political journalist at The Times newspaper and co-author of a biography of Cameron, said the prime minister was fluent and confident when speaking in public, and these were occasions when “his talent may have exceeded his discipline”.
“Cameron knows he’s at his most effective when he’s authentic and unscripted. But that carries risks and those risks are greater now that he’s at Number 10,” Elliott said, referring to the prime minister’s official residence in Downing Street.
Leaving aside the diplomatic fallout from his Pakistan remarks, which required some patching-up during talks with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Friday, Elliott said Cameron’s popularity at home was unlikely to be affected.
“He’s lucky that he’s made his mistakes early, and mostly in fields that are not quite so important domestically,” he said.
Bale said Cameron had shown during his years in opposition that he had the necessary skills to overcome periods of tension.
“If there’s one thing we know about David Cameron, it’s that he learns from his mistakes and he has an ability to recalibrate and smooth things over,” he said.
Cameron may simply tired after a gruelling election campaign, immediately followed by intensive talks to form a coalition with the smaller Liberal Democrat party and then by his first three months in office.
“The summer break can’t come soon enough,” said Elliott.
0 comments:
Post a Comment