CAMERON-CLEGG: AFTER HONEYMOON

PHOTO: UK PRIME MINISTER, MR. DAVID CAMERON.

Electorates in Britain had their say the other day. They sent one out, and brought the other in. And now Prime Minister David Cameron is on honeymoon with the British electorates. And his deputy, Nick Clegg with his Liberal Democrats, ride high on waves too. Surprising lot – third finishers in a race, and yet having so much power; it is one of the fallouts of the coalition deal between them and the Conservative Party.  That, after an election that produced no majority party. It was what the electorates asked for though. A ‘hung’ parliament that led to a potpourri of national leaders - delicate situation in a country that needed strong stable leadership.  But the outcome is why democracy is good. It lets the electorates eat their cake; how well Cameron handles the challenges he acquired with his mandate will tell whether the electorates have it or not.  

Electorates’ sudden change of mood can be strange, one reason the Catholic Church has almost immutable doctrines – people may get what they want today, the church fears, and for the good of the society, but wake up tomorrow to discover they made a mistake. One-man-one vote however allows people to have their say, anytime they the opportunity to say it. One man whipped his nation together and confronted the German war machine from 1940 to 1945. He was a hero in the war years. But the result of the 1945 election cast him a villain. His name is Sir Winston Churchill. The stack reality of scarcity of daily needs following the war bit hard; the electorates took that out on the man who led them through the war with dignity. He remained on the other side of the table in the House of Commons until 1951, when the mood swung against his Labour Party successors, and he returned as Prime Minister for another five years. The point in this is simple: Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown was unfortunate to have run into the violent waters of the 2008 and 2009 financial and economic crises. Now he is out of office. Politicians are victims, often, of what they didn’t create. But Cameron too has arrived office to confront loads he didn’t tie together by himself. They are partly domestic, and are partly international.

There is an urgent the need to give confidence to the financial market. That’s a domestic problem, a reason Cameron and Clegg patched up their wide differences fast and came to 10, Downing Street. It is also another reason their honeymoon will be cut short as Cameron will have to make policy statements shortly. He will, without a choice, announce tax rises and the spending cuts required to balance public finances. This is a source of headaches as voters who sent him hate tax hike. And he has differences with his   coalition partners over this. The markets think, in the coalition, there is a strong, stable government.  But the two partners will have to spend time to tie together their two different economic policies.

There will be a policy statement on curbing crimes too, as the use of gun and knife is one the rise. The first five months of year 2010 has seen almost a dozen youth sent to the grave. There will be new policy on drinking that leads to crime, with stiffer penalties for retailers of alcohol who sell to kids. There will be increased stop-and-search order for the law enforcers. And on prison matters, there will be Tories-Lib Dems differences to resolve over the issues of who to lock in or leave outside while serving terms.

Cameron faces problems with the National Health Service or NHS’s finances. The Service, within the next four years has to come up with lost savings worth 20 billion pound Sterling. And there is a host of other problems from increasing staff productivity in NHS, to art, all the way down to sports. These are little day-to-day details that get citizen angry enough to throw governments out. With the immediacy and compulsion that the new Government will have to force new policies down the throat of citizens, its chances of riding high in the opinion polls in the next few months will be a surprise.

International challenges that Cameron will have to face extends far into the horizon. This new PM needs to be introduced around. Without a Conservative Government in the last 13 years, he bounced on to the political stage as a new face and new voice of the Tories not long ago. Unlike Brown who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer before he took over from Prime Minister Blair, questions may be asked in far corners of the world who Cameron is. This means he will have to form a pat-on-the shoulder friendship with Washington; get to form a rapport with the two taciturn leaders in the Kremlin; take definite position on Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and the British troops out there. He will also have to put on armour in the face of global terrorism as well as calm nerves in Brussels –seat of EU – where they are wary of Tories in power. There is friendship he has to form on the other continents too.

Mr. Blair was a good pal of Africa while in power; he still is, consulting for countries here.  He was helpful with the setting up of NEPAD while Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo and South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki were around. And there was the debt settlement he assisted with when Obasanjo and the Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala negotiated one for Nigeria. Now folks here remember well Conservative Margaret Thatcher’s stand on South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) and apartheid throughout the 1980s. Cameron had even visited South Africa under the sponsorship of a pro-apartheid lobby group at a time Nelson Mandela was in prison. With English-speaking African countries being, traditionally, comfortable with Labour, Cameron may have some bonding to do with Africa’s leadership, and in Asia too, where he must handle well the Chinese, the Indians as well as a host of other matters on that continent.

David William Donald Cameron is 43 years old, and he is the youngest British prime minister since the early 19th century.  He is the third of his father’s four children. His father, Ian Cameron, is a stockbroker and the chairman of the London gentlemen’s club. Young Cameron attended Heatherdown, a prep school with alumni such as Princes Andrew and Edward. He later went to Eton, the traditional finishing school for Britain’s ruling classes, and much later to Oxford University.

He took up political jobs with the Conservative Party when he was 21 years old, and he had worked for several years as head of corporate affairs for a media company, Carlton Communications.  He lost in his first attempt to come to parliament in 1997. Conservative Witney in Oxfordshire elected him four years later. Cameron had risen through the party ranks, even in those years when the Tories lost repeatedly, to be elected as its leader. He has since given the Conservative party a compassionate outlook. He would have to bring that to bear as he faces the challenges of implementing much-disliked policies that his country needs in internal matters, as well as the delicate matter of diplomacy on the international stage.

Ajibade, a Consultant Writer, lives in Abuja. email tunjioa@yahoo.com