The Man Who Never Was

This document relates to a 2013 item on Europe with and from the role of David Cameron and his policies on Europe. Six years later and his successor, Theresa May maybe about to leave office before an election, it gives a point of reference to the present mess.

The title of this post is that of a 1956 film about a Second World War plot to deceive the Germans about where allied troops might land in Southern France in 1943. It needed a workable plan, to be feasible and above all a body floated out to be found and believed.

Cameron asked us to believe him on Europe and look what happened next. There are times when someone might be taken aside by a wise person familiar with the ways of the wider world and have things said quietly to them. Preferably, the person concerned will have a command of language and ability to reduce things to brutal simplicity so there can be no misunderstanding.

David Cameron, our Boy of Tears (see Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus”) should have been told to lay off the history and concentrate on the future. One good reason is that so much of history is fiercely debated and open to differing interpretations.  Another is that he invariably gets it badly wrong.

He had made a speech on Europe as critics called it, nailing 95 theses to the doors of Brussels when it might be more like leaving what is left of a bakers dozen of humbugs behind the settee. The worst insult to think of is that it is the sort of speech I might have drafted to get a politician into deep trouble.

In 2019 we do not have Cameron as Prime Minister but is able to provide for his family from his financial work, along with the others of his time all off the radar but in the money. Where was Cameron’s speech made?

It was not the House of Commons; that once might be the obvious place.  Nor was it somewhere like the Manchester Free Trade Hall, Liverpool St. Georges Hall or Glasgow or even Deacon Brodie’s in Edinburgh. Nor was it at a Conservative Party moot at the Blackpool Winter Gardens or Scarborough Spa or even Westminster Central Hall.

It was at Bloomberg, the media financial outfit who broadcast to satellite. This really says it all about his vision of government and Europe.

He was very lucky to avoid having a mid speech break of several minutes for advertisements for gambling firms, washing powders and male perfumes.

Now we remember the advert's but few of us remember Cameron.