Gavan Reilly: Cameron's Bobby Ewing moment may not be so inspired
There’s been a lot of memorable TV moments this year but I wonder if anything can top the comedy shock value of Sky News’ Kay Burley, aghast at the sight of David Cameron once again walking down Downing Street as he made his dramatic return to the British government. The clip is worth tracking down if you didn’t see it on Monday. “David Cam-er-on?!” (The comedy value was tarnished by Burley then making a needless quip about his apparent weight gain in the seven years since he last lived at Number 10.)
On the face of it, having someone of Cameron’s political heft around the government again can’t be any harm. Since the last general election, there have been three prime ministers, five chancellors, and who knows how many other ministerial reshuffles and departures. Bringing a sense of stability – the idea of the UK having a grown-up in the room – certainly can’t be any harm. The Tories have almost become so synonymous with political infighting that it will be a pleasant surprise for other countries to have someone who clearly knows what he’s talking about.
But then again, Cameron’s own history of foreign policy is hardly golden. Aside from the obvious policy catastrophe of Brexit, there’s also his mixed involvement in the Middle East. Most people would say getting involved in 2011 to help unseat Muammar Gaddafi in Libya was a good idea, but the UK took such a lax approach to his successors that within three years the country had descended into a second civil war from which it has never truly recovered. More significantly, you might argue that much of Russia’s rise, and the crisis in Ukraine, followed a major policy debacle in 2014 – when Russia sponsored the use of chemical weapons but Cameron couldn’t convince parliament to let him intervene.
And didn’t Cameron, as recently as 2016, lose a nationwide campaign because people didn’t want their foreign policy being dictated by unelected elites?…
- Gavan Reilly is Political Correspondent with Virgin Media News and Political Columnist for the Meath Chronicle - Column first appeared in last Tuesday's paper.