The Coalition That Gaffes Together…

Were America's 24-hour newsrooms not so enthralled over LiLo's mug shots or when Mel Gibson gets his next one, they might have picked up on these two nuggets that occurred during Prime Minister David Cameron's trip to Washington this week.

First, the Prime Minister admitted to Sky News' Adam Boulton that Britain, while not a pushover, was the junior partner in the special relationship with the U.S. What really irked British media though was not Cameron's admission of this generally accepted reality, but how he qualified it.

Cameron suggested that the UK was also the junior partner in 1940. While this might play right into the hand of my jingoist compatriots who to this day insist America saved Britain's hide in World War II, there's a slight historical problem with this.

As 'The Few' took to the air to defend Britain's skies against Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe, the States remained on the sidelines, limiting itself to not-so-covert assistance of the Allies by way of the Lend-Lease Act. The resolve of 'The Few' prevailed when Germany formally abandoned the Battle of Britain in December 1940, months before Roosevelt and Churchill would meet off the coast of Newfoundland to promulgate the Atlantic Charter, and a solid year before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Even after America's "day of infamy", the United States only declared on Japan, which resulted in an invitation to the European theatre through Germany and Italy declaring on the U.S. on 11 December 1941.

Doesn't sound like a senior partner to me.

The staffers at 10 Downing, though, were more pressed into action over another gaffe that had occurred 12 hours earlier at the lectern of the House of Commons. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, standing in for Cameron during this week's Prime Minister's Questions, tussled words with Labour's Jack Straw, who served as foreign secretary and Lord Chancellor during Labour's past 13 years at the helm. In an effort to score a political one-up on the opposition amid a charged climate lacking decorum, Clegg declared: "Maybe he one day - perhaps we will have to wait for his memoirs - could account for his role in the most disastrous decision of all, which is the illegal invasion of Iraq."

Slight problem: a majority of Conservatives, including a freshman MP from the constituency of Witney named David Cameron, backed Tony Blair's government in joining the U.S. in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Liberal Democrats, when Clegg was representing Yorkshire in the European Parliament, were the largest party in Britain to oppose the war and declare it illegal.

What followed was a stark lesson for everyone running the Coalition government. 10 Downing attempted in vain to qualify Clegg's comments as his own, and then refused to counter them as Conservatives went on the counter-offensive. This also generated confusion over who exactly will declare whether or not British involvement in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was illegal, as a spokesman for the inquiry looking into the lead up to the conflict said its findings will not include an explicit statement of legality. Further, Clegg's statement from the dispatch box, were it to become a legal reality, could provide grounds to pursue criminal cases against current and former Government officials and even British troops who served in Iraq since March 2003.

While this may not prove too much a dent in the viability of the Cameron-Clegg Coalition, the slip-up in putting party platform over Government position, alongside the repeated yet draining efforts of Commons Speaker John Bercow to maintain order during the first PMQs with a Liberal party member at the lecturn, will give the Coalition reason to re-assess their strategy when dealing with a regrouping Labour opposition and disgruntled backbenchers. For Clegg, it is a stark reminder of the importance to represent the views of the Coalition as a whole when he speaks in place of the Prime Minister. Besides, there now exists a once-monthly session for questions directed to the Deputy Prime Minister, where leeway may occur for where his views as the "junior partner" of the Coalition may differ from the Prime Minister.

Because it had to be done…

With apologies to the Chicago Tribune:

Cameron's keys to 10 Downing are somewhere in Belfast

Polls in the UK are set to open in a matter of hours, and every paper not named Mirror, Guardian, Observer, and Independent is encouraging or all but encouraging their readers to vote Conservative. Only one paper (Mirror) remains supportive of Labour, but is encouraging tactical voting to push Lib Dem candidates in marginal seats with the Tories to prevent David Cameron from moving into 10 Downing.

As the Conservatives figure out what shade of blue carpet to install, they still need to get the keys to 10 Downing (and make sure today's front page for The Sun isn't followed by "CAMERON DEFEATS BROWN"). And rather than Buckingham Palace, where the next prime minister will formally receive the consent of the Queen to form the next government, Cameron will likely need to travel to Ireland.

Of course by Ireland, I mean Northern Ireland, where any seat not won by the Social Democrat & Labour Party or Alliance Party (the latter unlikely to win any) helps the Conservatives. For every two seats claimed by Sinn Féin, the Conservative target is lowered by one. Because Sinn Féin's members will not take their seats in Parliament, they technically can't vote against Cameron forming a government, nor can they vote for any government that'll be perfectly happy to let Ulster leave the UK & unite with the lower 26 counties that comprise the Republic of Ireland.

Additionally, the Conservatives have a firm affiliation with the Ulster Unionist Party. Any UUP candidate elected to Parliament will be expected to support a Conservative government. Problem is that the last time the Tories were in power, the UUP were the main Unionist party in Northern Ireland. Since 1997, the Democratic Unionist Party (who could essentially qualify as Europe's flagship chapter of the Sarah Palin Fan Club) have supplanted the UUP in that role. Worse, the UUP have no incumbents in the House of Commons, as their lone MP left the party and is contesting the race as an independent. Also part of Cameron's Ulster keychain is a likely gain on the border with the ROI: an independent pro-Tory candidate in the constituency of Fermanagh and South Tryone, Rodney Connor, is looking to reclaim this seat with the help of the Tories and both Unionist parties.

The ultimate notch on Cameron's key will come from the DUP, whom Cameron was assailing during a visit Tuesday to Belfast. Cameron, of course, was hoping to sway Unionist & non-sectarian votes to the UUP from DUP, who under the Robinsons have been dogged by scandals involving the typical political trip-ups of sex, money and power. (Sinn Féin didn't come off much better in the expenses scandal, somehow having six-figure access to the Queen's purse strings despite refusing to swear allegiance to her!) But with the DUP likely to remain the fourth largest party in the House of Commons, it would be tactically foolish to dismiss their MPs if they're needed to ensure a majority-backed government.

The Conservatives and UUP, after accounting for Sinn Féin's absentions and the four mandatory non-aligned seats that account for the Speaker and his three deputies, will need anywhere from 320 to 324 MPs for an outright majority. If they find themselves within 10 of that number, they will need to be ready to make concessions to Peter Robinson, especially as he is first minister of Northern Ireland. Those concessions, naturally, will be favourable to Ulster, meaning any drastic cuts a Cameron government will pursue will wind up occurring in greater number to Wales, Scotland, and north of the M62.

While eyes will be focused on three-way races, marginals, and bellwethers, eventually the key to 10 Downing will be found sitting somewhere in Stormont.

A Follow Up: Cameron's interview with NY Times

As I was scouting major U.S. media Web sites today to find who's reporting on the Guardian's report on widespread phone tapping by the Murdoch-owned News of the World tabloid, I found this interesting gem from The New York Times: an interview with Tory leader David Cameron, set to be published in their Sunday magazine.

Cameron has defied calls from members of Parliament to sack PR director Andy Coulson, who left his post as editor of News of the World following the initial hacking incident. This excerpt from the Cameron profile piece, written by Christopher Caldwell, might provide insight as to Cameron's apparent determination to keep Coulson on board:

The party is run, for the most part, by the intimates of Cameron who occupy a single suite of offices in Norman Shaw South, a parliamentary office building on the Thames, a block away from the Palace of Westminster. Iain Martin of The Telegraph coined the term “the Quartet” to describe the four figures — Cameron; his shadow chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne; his policy adviser, Steve Hilton; and his director of communications, Andy Coulson — who are at the heart of all the shadow government’s decisions. . . . .Coulson is credited with translating Cameron’s agenda into terms that a nonmetropolitan public can understand: less about the environment and more about immigration. Less about social responsibility and more about social breakdown. To assume Cameron needs coaching from Coulson or anyone else about the popular media may be to give Cameron too little credit. He spent seven years, after all, working at a television company that did a lot of down-market programming. Cameron makes his immersion in popular culture a point of pride. When he met Barack Obama last summer, he gave him the gift of some favorite CDs — the Smiths, Radiohead, Gorillaz, Lily Allen.

If Cameron's trying to become the next Thomas Dewey, this might be a start.