I like to allow myself to think that on occasion I have the capacity to be a reasonably astute analyst of situations. But there are times when despite my sometime insights, the wonders and mystiques of the decisions of others throw me into total wondrous mystery, like some kind of Carrollian land of bafflement where trees grow with question mark leaves and little Tumnus-types trot around scratching their heads permanently nonplussed.
Arsène Wenger deciding he didn't need a colossus, Tom Cruise deciding he didn't need his marbles and John Redwood deciding he didn't need the words are all recent, memorable additions to the “WHAT were they thinking?” list. However, altogether more serious and therefore more bewildering are the ties chosen by David Cameron with foreign political parties with apparent disregard to the connotations and consequences.
These are not particularly well publicised ties, so if you enjoy the simple privileges of blinking and scratching, you may well have missed them. Political parties need foreign allies, of course, but not like this. Their rather backstage nature is so dichotomous with Cameron's usual image-is-all politics that it would seem to suggest an unacknowledged awareness that these ties may actually not be popular enough for public consumption. And as don’t seem to have any functional political benefit either, they beg – and I really do mean beg – the question; why?
HM Government needs to be better than that. Groups marching for the SS don't just march for the SS (as if that were not enough); their raison d'être is not to meet once a year, unfurl some flags, drudge quietly down the cobbles and disband for another annum. They have agendas, plans, ideas and ideals. Behind their own doors there will be other unsavoury and unseemly agendas being discussed, entirely unsuitable for links with any government of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
To align with them is to align with what they stand for. Now even in our time of charlatan politics there won't be many cynical enough to extrapolate this link too far into Cameron’s policies, but the old adage about laying down with dogs never implied you would then get up a dog yourself, just that when you're least expecting or desiring it, a bloated flea would pop out from your cuff at a dinner party or from your hair on a lover's pillow. Surely for all his misguided attempts at politics he has enough simple intelligence see that this is folly?
Now sometimes there are benefits and reasons. It would be remiss to not mention the Iraq war here and our endless support of global US-lead incursions. But it has to be noted that there is a difference between acting for better or worse in support of an alliance aged over generations, and the confusing fishing that Cameron is doing.
This difference is highlighted even more when the question is asked; what does he think he has to gain? It really is hard to get an insight into what he could possibly fathom the positive outcomes of these allegiances might be, leading to the conclusion that like so much of his work, it’s all gloss on the surface with no substance underneath. Or is he planning on using these people when in power? Rolling out the red carpet to Number 10 for the dark luminaries of the Law and Justice Party? Either way our Government is more than that; it should be and it must be more.
When George Bush dusts off the grey cells and creeps from the shadows to lend you foreign policy advice, it's time to have a long look in the mirror and ask yourself what you're doing. Sometimes it's better to stand alone than with the entirely wrong company.
This is a lesson that British Government used to ladle out to the world in heaped steaming portions. Our might not being what it once was we can no longer exemplify this and massive decisions on allegiance must now be faced instead of just being wafted off as some irritant from some paltry government from some place off these isles. But these ties are not difficult decisions; they seem too simple to even be called decisions in such an important arena and yet Cameron has surely, surely gotten them entirely wrong.
To sacrifice judgment and pick a side just because there is one there to be chosen? These are staggering choices Cameron is making that only become more confusing and concerning the more they are analysed. There is a pattern.
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