We certainly didn’t learn much new about David Cameron from his flooding press conference this afternoon. We already knew that his approach to crises is to let things get rather bad for a little while, and then, with his back against the wall, to perform well as a statesman taking control of a messy situation. He did that again today, with a clear line that ‘money is no object’ as a means of countering the Ukip line on diverting some of the aid budget to flood victims. Cameron set out specific examples of the extra spending on flood relief, a bigger role for the military – with 1,600 service men and women deployed by the end of today and thousands more on call – and engaged with that demand on the aid budget (he was less engaging on whether he will start holding these press conferences again regularly though, which is odd, as today was a demonstration of how Prime Ministerial he can look and how good he is at taking questions from the press). The contrast between the clear lines that he delivered today and the flip-flap-flopping of his ministers and the Number 10 machine over the past few days couldn’t be sharper.
One of those clear lines wasn’t so much a line as a clear omission. The Prime Minister took care to praise the Environment Agency staff repeatedly for their work. But he didn’t mention Chris Smith. And when he was pressed on Smith’s role, he was as clear as he possibly could be without saying that Smith should go, saying that now wasn’t the time to talk about resignations, which suggests that there will be a time to talk about resignations in the future:
‘On the issue of the Environment Agency staff, those are the ones on the front line and I want to single them out for praise, but I’ve said this is not a time for people to leave their posts, this is a time for people to knuckle down and get on with the very important work of running their organisations and departments that they have to do. But the staff, you know, I want to really reinforce that… I’ve answered that as well by saying this is not a time for people to leave their posts, it is a time to back those in those posts and to get on with their jobs.’
‘I’ll never forget the impact of the 2007 floods on my own constituency,’ Cameron said towards the end of the press conference. The impact of those floods on his own career was pretty unforgettable, too: he was flayed for continuing with his trip to Rwanda. So naturally he would have wanted to make the way he handles this second round of floods a sign that he is a good leader in a crisis. Cameron did give that impression today – but it’s a shame that his essay crisis had the same messy introduction as it always does.
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