Did They Pay Him to Say This?

From the desk of The Brussels Journal on Mon, 2006-05-01 22:04

A quote from The Financial Times, 1 May 2006

mccain.jpg

David Cameron has been criticised by a senior US Republican senator over his decision to pull the Conservative party out of the main centre-right political group in Europe. John McCain, a possible contender for the US presidency in 2008, said he viewed the European People’s party – which includes the main Christian Democratic parties in the European Union – as a vital partner for the Republicans.

Speaking in Brussels, Mr McCain praised Mr Cameron for making the Conservatives more “competitive” but suggested the Tory leader should show some solidarity with the party’s European allies. […] The Conservatives have always had a difficult relationship with the European People’s party, whose national components tend to favour EU integration and are more supportive of the European social model.

And you believe what Cameron says?

Submitted by Mike77 on Tue, 2006-05-02 14:57.

David Cameron['s] ... decision to pull the Conservative party out of the main centre-right political group in Europe.

He said this to get elected party leader. He had to, because rival Liam Fox had said this was what he would do.

I doubt he ever had any serious intention of doing so. And here is evidence to the contrary:

David Cameron threw down the gauntlet to Eurosceptic Tory MPs yesterday by declaring that anyone who advocated withdrawal from the European Union would not serve on his front bench.

No place for Eurosceptic MPs in my team, warns Cameron.

Let's face it, Cameron is a PR spiv and not to be trusted. One man who's worked with him says he's never heard him give a straight answer about anything, and he wouldn't even trust his morals sufficiently to allow him to look after a child's pocket money.

Is McCain thinking about

Submitted by Brigands on Tue, 2006-05-02 13:06.

Is McCain thinking about switching sides...turning in the Repubs for the Democrats?
No offense, but who asked McCain anything?

McCain

Submitted by marcfrans on Tue, 2006-05-02 20:43.

@Brigands

No, I don't think that McCain is switching sides in terms of american domestic politics. He has a deserved reputation for 'independence' from party orthodoxy, but he is also in full pursuit of the Republican nomination for the next presidency. I confess that he was my 'favorite' in the 2000 battle for the american presidency among all the Democratic and Republican candidates at the time in the primaries.

We can all only speculate about the reasons for why he said what he said in Brussels recently. My 'theory' about that is that he is not well-informed enough about contemporary European politics, and that he has not fully grasped yet the 'cultural' transformation within the European People's Party over the last 15 years or so. I suspect that McCain sees European politics still too much through the prism of the Cold War, in which christian-democrat parties in various European countries did indeed play a crucial role in maintaining western resolve. With the collapse of the soviet union, however, many European christian democrats have felt freeer to become more utopian about geopolitics. McCain would do well to catch on faster to that reality, if he wants to better understand who America's friends are, and who its enemies (for now).