David Cameron puts cards on table in Sri Lanka summit blame game Union jibes are the Tory get-out-of-jail tactic for 2015, so well done the PM for managing to drag Len McCluskey into Sri Cri Lanka The prime minister achieved a personal first on Monday when he managed to drag the name of Len McCluskey into a statement on the Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka. Contrary to a joke in the current edition of Private Eye, the Unite union leader has not just been elected president of Zimbabwe after a campaign of fraud and intimidation. But David Cameron did it all the same. The summit statement was yoked to a progress report on British aid to the typhoon-stricken Philippines. But some MPs preferred to focus on the stricken Commonwealth, shamed by its association with the blood-soaked regime in Colombo, they argued. But who to blame for that decision? Amid the days many human tragedies, the PM bravely tackled this burning issue too. He stuck it on Miliband-backer Gordon Browns government. At the 2009 summit it accepted Sri Lanka as host in 2013, but now had the opportunist cheek to complain about it. Ah, but no, countered Labours leader, who was sporting his new mini-mullet haircut, the one which has set the fashion pages aflutter but not the voters. In 2009 Colombo had been blocked as a venue for the 2011 bash, but pencilled in for 2013, subject to human rights progress, the mulleted matinee idol explained. The decision could have been reversed in 2011. So it was Daves own fault? Certainly not. If he knows anything about foreign affairs, and I doubt it because he barely gets out of Islington, he would know this is a consensus organisation, Cameron countered – a reference to the Commonwealth, not the coalition. Then came Daves karate chop. He cops out every time. Too weak to stand up to Len McCluskey, too weak to stand up to dictators abroad. It was Flashman bluster, so Tory MPs loved it: the union bogey is their get-out-of-jail card for 2015. Apart from that Cameron did quite well. It had been right to attend, to champion democratic values, free trade and the brave Tamils who had dared to speak out during Camerons visit (even journalists had been heroic). Some of the trips critics gracefully conceded they had been wrong. And whenever an MP protested that Dave had failed to take the lead on climate change or LGBT rights, he said: Obviously, its quite difficult to take the lead if you dont go. The question of whether the summit cup was half-full or half-empty had been preceded by a similar question about the state of the UK jobs market. Is it a foaming cup of cheer and rising employment totals, disabled widows whistling on their way to work in Poundland at Atoss kind suggestion, more orphans up chimneys than ever before, single mums on nightshifts? Iain Duncan Smith and his scouse cheerleader, Esther McVey, certainly gave that impression – IDS in a tone of quiet depression, McVey as happy-clappy as if she was still on childrens telly, her cup half-full of chardonnay. Faced with a stream of only lightly-cooked government figures about falling jobless totals and rising numbers in work, Labour countered with sourness: failed targets, slow and unjust Atos rulings, IDSs department collapsing into Philippine disorder as Typhoon Iain takes its toll. The jobs cup half-full? Never. It is a half-empty tankard of flat Newcastle brown ale with a dead wasp and half a crisp floating on it. In response IDS kept losing his rag. The Quiet Man noisily accused Labours spokeswoman, Rachel Reeves, of being pathetic and told the unstoppable Chris Bryant, a Tory turned Blair-Brownite (and now he says hes a socialist on his website), of getting so excited hell jump out of his underpants if hes not careful. A sly jibe, that one. Unfazed, McVey was finger-waggingly combative, but cheerful. Whose job can she being eyeing, Iain? theguardian/politics/2013/nov/18/davidcameron-commonwealth-summit
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 03:45:45 +0000
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