Simon Jenkins: Sorry Cameron, But Air Force One is no Place for a British Prime Minister
Simon Jenkins is a journalist and author. He writes for the Guardian as well as broadcasting for the BBC. He has edited the Times and the London Evening Standard.
Washington hospitality is dangerously intoxicating to British prime ministers. Tony Blair never recovered from his first "Washington high" in 1998. Swivel-eyed after a White House banquet, he came home putting out feelers for a more palatial London residence and a "Blair Force One" jet. American presidents could do no wrong after that. Now David Cameron is doing even better, with an invitation to fly in Air Force One itself. Such a cocaine rush of power could lead Britain to become the 51st state.
The items on Cameron's Washington agenda are draped in imperial purple. Should we withdraw our armies from Afghanistan? Should we station bombers off Iran? What can be done about the rebellious Pashtuns and the piratical Somalis? What moves should we make on Palestine, Syria, the Arab spring and the rumbling might of China? Alexander the Great was a two-bit provincial compared with this portentous posing.
It is hard to see why Cameron needs to be in Washington. He and Barack Obama can chat on the phone. There is no great disagreement that needs sorting out face to face. The topics on the table do not appear on Britain's electoral radar. A travelling prime minister moves in a cocoon of advisers and sycophants, walking red carpets, shielded from controversy and bathed in the cliches of diplomacy. The whole visit is a self-indulgent holiday.
As a result, disaster so often attends these jaunts. James Callaghan returned from abroad to an economic crisis and asked, "What crisis?" Margaret Thatcher fell from power because she thought a Paris dinner more important than grafting for support for her leadership in the Commons. Travel may broaden the mind and make a break from the tedium of home politics, but Cameron's love of foreign parts has taken him on a reported 50 trips since taking office. To what purpose?..