Erstellt am: 24. 1. 2013 - 01:16 Uhr

Too much like work

David Cameron should watch more Danish TV. If he did, he might not have committed tactical suicide yesterday.

West Wing was long ago. Over the last year and a half, the politically inclined British TV audience has been gripped by Borgen, a Danish TV drama about prime minister Birgitte Nyborg at the head of a tricky coalition government caught between her idealistic instincts and a Machiavellian knack for manipulation.

Everyone's watching it, except David Cameron, who, according to the Daily Mail, finds it "too much like work". If so, he is flattering himself. In any case he already seems to have missed one or two helpful lessons.

Today (I am writing this on the night after Cameron's big speech on Europe) all the jingoistic British press will praise his strong words. But that's how it always goes in those Borgen episodes before fate takes a drastic turn for the worse.

Blow-dried frog-eyed Nigel Farage, head of the UK Independence Party who sells right-wing populism with a charming smile, can hardly believe his luck. Only yesterday I saw and heard him on four different discussion panels, three of them on the BBC. All that publicity for a party without a single Member of Parliament is priceless.

For Cameron, a Churchill by convenience, this is the beginning of four very interesting years until his promised referendum on staying in or dropping out of the EU, interrupted in two years' time by the next elections, whose campaign he has effectively kicked off early with yesterday's reckless move - on the run from the right wing of his own party.

In any board game a move is only as good as its anticipation of the ones following after, and in this sense the Cameron school of chess is best described as blind optimism.

DR

Birgitte Nyborg, having just had David Cameron for breakfast

His promise to broker a new deal for Britain is nebulous enough to be able to sell whatever token concessions as a triumph (the EU should be more flexible, more competitive - when has the neoliberal consensus of the common market last been heard to demand anything else over the last twenty years?).
But in truth Cameron's backbenchers, in their national fervour, have no interest in any of this.

In the two years of negotiations up until the next elections, they will see their pre-conceived opinions of Brussels arrogance confirmed. They will press Cameron, not just on the referendum, but also for a call to drop out of the EU, as promised in case the British desire for special membership conditions cannot be satisfied.

Contrary to Cameron, only Farage and UKIP will be able to go into the election on a clear anti-EU ticket. And if Cameron should, against the odds, really be able to keep up the chauvinistic chest-beating until 2015 to win those elections, he will still find himself in a pickle two years hence.

Either his negotiations will have failed completely, in which case he will have to campaign for leaving the union from the position of a loser, who is internationally isolated, including all the grim consequences such as an end to EU subsidies for depressed British regions, from Wales to Cornwall to the English north-east.
Or, as seems far more likely, he will squeeze a few symbolic gestures out of the EU that the eurosceptic wing of the Tory party as well as UKIP will inevitably and joyfully tear to pieces.

In that event Cameron will not only be portrayed as a traitor to the national cause, he will also have to lead an enthusiastic campaign to remain in the EU against all the instincts of the Conservative base. Good luck with that.

Nigel Farage knows all this and looks even more smug than usual now. Birgitte Nyborg would doubtless have seen it coming long ago. But Cameron, who is enjoying the transient praise of the press today, will already be toast tomorrow.