This trip to Washington couldn’t have gone much better for David Cameron. Not only has he had serious meaty talks with President Obama about the importance of tackling terrorism and cyberterrorism, but he also seems to have the President on side when it comes to Tory-sounding language about the need for a strong economy.
But it’s not just Obama who has been helping Cameron as he campaigns in the General Election from across the Atlantic. Christine Lagarde, whose organisation has not always been a friend to the Tories in the past few years, has given Cameron the best possible support he could hope for (as well as a slightly awkward photo in which the Prime Minister seems to be expounding passionately on an important topic while Lagarde is trying to not chuckle about something). The head of the International Monetary Fund praised the PM’s ‘eloquent and convincing’ economic leadership and said other countries should follow Britain’s example:
‘The UK is leading in a very eloquent and convincing way in the European Union
‘A few countries, only a few, are driving growth: one is the USA, where growth is solid, anchored and where we foresee a 2015 that will be also a good year. And the UK where clearly growth is improving, the deficit has been reduced, and where the unemployment is going down.’
That means the Tories can claim quite convincingly they’ve stuck to their guns and won over even their critics. Expect George Osborne to slip this into conversation quite by accident at the next Treasury questions when he embarks on his usual lecture about how many predictions the Labour party got wrong on the economy. And so David Cameron has had a couple of very successful days campaigning in the British General Election while on American soil.
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