David Cameron Compared to Tony Blair

Yesterday David Cameron rose in the House of Commons to make the case for British leading involvement in the enforcement of the no-fly zone over Libya. He did so on the legal basis of UN Security Council resolution 1973, which I don't think anyone doubts authorizes states to do exactly that. Two questions remain: the first, whether a no-fly zone won't inevitably, through mission creep, lead to putting boots on the ground far beyond the small scale necessary to conduct airstrikes - i.e. SAS troops or US Army Rangers providing targeting information; the second question is whether, although legal, the no-fly zone enforcement operation is morally justified.

I have made my opinion on the first question clear already - although I should add that over the last couple of days I have found myself feeling less and less stringent about the matter. With regards to the second question we might use the doctrine of the just war theory to 'measure' the moral justification for the mission. I hope to do so in a future post - or posts - as it will take some homework.

This post is not so much to do with the military operation, but rather with the political operating of Mr. Cameron in this context. BBC's Nick Robinson comments that the Prime Minister's performance in the Commons is so very unlike that of Tony Blair in his debates on the Invasion of Iraq in 2003:

This is not Iraq. Nothing like it. I am not Blair. Nothing like him. ... His [Cameron's] performance was low key rather than impassioned. It came in a debate which will end with a proper vote (rather than the vote on the Iraq war which ended with a more technical parliamentary voting procedure). It followed the publication of legal advice.

Mr. Robinson has a point. The PM set out his case meticulously and calmly, without relying on such misty, half-legalistic rhetorical flourishes that his New Labour predecessor employed.

Comparing Mr. Blair and Mr. Cameron directly is not doing an injustice to Gordon Brown, who - sadly for him - was but an interim ruler between the Blair/New Labour years and the Cameron/Coalition era - although the conservative in me hopes Mr. Cameron soon gets to turn it into a Cameron/Conservative era. The two men, as politicians, are also quite different characters. Mr. Blair was perhaps the perfect politician in the American style: prone to grand standing, media savvy and with the slightest hint of man-of-the-people-populism. On the other hand, Mr. Cameron is a true British politican, composed, respectful of Parliament and its many priviliges, and honest and open towards the public, without having to resort to excessive spin.

What Mr. Cameron should not forget, however, is that the greatest British politicians of the broadcast media age, Winston Churchill, Harold Macmillan and Margaret Thatcher combined that British Parliamentarianism with rhethorical strength. They understood that if truth is expressed beautifully, it is so much more powerful a weapon. Mr. Blair knew this, and for his other failings would have joined their ranks. The Prime Minister can still do so, and I hope he does.