Politics

William Hague’s attack on Israel is a hint of big changes to come

29 July 2006

At the time, Mr Hague spoke of ‘a timetable’ for Mr Cameron himself to visit the Oval Office. Thus far, the invitation has conspicuously failed to arrive. Meanwhile Mr Cameron has been asked to a dinner hosted for him in New York by Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and a formidable figure in Manhattan’s liberal aristocracy. It is a safe bet that her guests will include few friends of Donald Rumsfeld. A delighted Mr Cameron has hailed her offer as a ‘non-electoral milestone on the march to power’.

Few of these milestones will be crossed in Washington, a place where Mr Cameron personally has little reputation. Visiting British politicians find themselves asked whether it is true that he is building a wind turbine atop his London house, a gesture which some Republicans put in the same ideological category as wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt. When he met Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, she noted with displeasure that the unambiguous solidarity she had expected the young Tory leader to offer was not forthcoming.

David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter credited with the phrase ‘axis of evil’, offers this verdict on Mr Cameron: ‘The politician he is coming most to resemble is the George W. Bush of vintage 1999–2000. He uses flowery language to avoid tough choices, to evade rather than take a stand.’ In London a different version of the same charge is being levelled by Cameron-sceptics: namely, that Mr Cameron is trying to appease both the Arabists and the Atlanticists.

If so, he will not be able to straddle the fence for long. The demand for clarity — and change — is growing. At the Tory awayday in Buckinghamshire earlier this month, Alan Duncan (a former oil trader with strong Arab connections and a picture of Yasser Arafat on his website) testily informed the shadow Cabinet that domestic reform is useless without foreign-policy reform. For once, he was heeded. This argument is now adjourned over the long recess. But when the Conservatives meet in Bournemouth in October they might just have a new world-view to christen.