MP's are not just the devious curs we thought they were (and brawlers, if Labour), but they are also deceitful and duplitious. Recently, Cameron was bleating on about curing the binge drinking culture by raising the price of alcohol. He appears to have settled on this solution because there is a tangential link and it won't affect anyone he hangs around with, even if they are prone to the odd binge themselves.
But whilst this got all the media attention and seemed a waste of the PM's time, he was quietly off to France to sign up to a joint military command structure. No explanation and certainly no mandate from the public to do such a thing. Indeed if the current military posturing of the French isn't warning enough then history should provide pretty strong alarm bells.
France of course was the country that was outraged that British troops pulled out of France in WW2 to protect Britain, after the French has fairly spectacularly failed to defend their own country. Apparently they felt that was our job. The bit of the French nation that came to England offered to join the two countries together under one leadership. That would be Britain and the place called France, currently occupied by Germans. The other bit enthusiastically joined in with the Nazis and fought against Britain.
Or more recently the France who wanted nothing to do with the military side of NATO because they couldn't run it, but when the fighting kicked off in the former Yugoslavia they demanded to be kept informed of planning. This they promptly passed on to their Serbian friends. Then there is a certain amount of ire that the Americans felt about something or other, when they felt the need to label them as 'cheese eating, surrender monkeys'.
Cameron has to stop acting like some elderly grandmother who is duped out of her possessions by a conman, playing on her civility. Aircraft carriers. We haven't got any, but there is an on/off project to build a couple of pretty big ones. If the on side wins, they will be built in France apparently. And the French have also suggested that we provide the platform and they will provide the aircraft. There is a reason for that.
When you decide to 'do' something, it is the planes that do the 'doing', not the carrier. In the film, A Few Good Men, a US Marine declares his admiration for the Navy. He says that they are fine fellows because, whenever the Marines have to go somewhere to fight, 'you guys give us a lift'. The French you see, love glory, they just don't like working for it.
Maybe Cameron should stick to the binge drinking project, he is way out of his depth elsewhere.
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