Cameron's Neocons And Their Bushite Buddies

By Steve Hynd

Wil Inboden has an op-ed at Shadow Government today in which he writes that David Cameron and his Conservative Party, shoo-in certainties to be the next UK government, are being intentionally vague in explaining what their foreign policy prescriptions might be.

The politics of this are understandable. Why spell out specific policies which might elicit criticism and turn off some voters, especially when Gordon Brown's manifest governing failures make almost any opposition party look good in comparison?

He then expands upon a blueprint of Tory foreign policy based upon that vagueness - and the blueprint is of a policy that is uncontroversial, rocks no boats, is...safe.

Don't believe a word of it.

Inboden is part of the leadership of a new London-based think tank,  Legatum, which is a refuge in exile for Bush administration rightwingers of the neocon and faith-based varieties. They have a vested interest in seeing their neocon and wingnut colleagues in the Cameron camp come to the fore when Cameron becomes prime minister, and in encouraging those same fellow travellers to keep a lowish profile until then. Such wingnuttery is utterly discredited in the UK and can only become powerful again on the back of a landslide "anyone but Brown" vote - which can only happen if Cameron's team aren't widely seen as wingnuts until it is too late. Thus the description of Cameron's foreign policy as "liberal conservative".

But realist UK conservatives have long had misgivings about Cameron's foreign policy advisors. All those closest to Cameron who have an interest in foreign policy are neocon or neocon-leaning, including shadow foreign secretary William Hague, shadow defence secretary Liam Fox - who is apparently willing to go to war with Russia or anyone else over gas piplelines - and shadow education minister Michael Gove, who is "happy to be called a neocon" and insists that Cameron has "given the strongest possible support for our mission in Afghanistan", which is "part of a broader struggle against Islamist fundamentalism".

Cameron has always been a clone of Tony Blair, with a strong belief only in getting elected and willing to compromise anything to that aim. Thus, as Inboden writes, we're only going to find out what Cameron's real policies are after he enters No10 as prime minister. That a coterie of interventionist hawks are advising him, supported by Bush-era faith-based and neocon wingnuts, doesn't bode well.