I must confess I was a little baffled to read this piece in today's Observer. Nick Cohen, a man I respect enormously for his independent approach, his reluctance to follow the standard leftist line on Iraq, his disdain for Livingstone and his politics, bizarrely paints a portrait of David Cameron and the Conservatives as a group of foreigner-hating isolationists. His piece is entitled "which foreigners DO you like, David?"
Cohen throws together an unlikely melange of evidence to make his case that Cameron might be a xenophobe. He rightly criticises British foreign policy in ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s (although this has precious little to do with Cameron, or even William Hague for that matter, who was Secretary of State for Wales at the time). He talks about the co-operation between Putin's Mother Russia Party and the Conservatives in the otherwise obscure Council of Europe. He then throws in last week's unfortunate comments by Lord Dixon-Smith and boorish anti-Italian rhetoric by candidate Alun Cairns. All told, not much of a case, and crucially none of it in any way linked to David Cameron. If my memory is correct, the only thing grouping this obscure set of charges is that they have almost all been raised by Labour's Denis MacShane in the House of Commons, who loves low-level mischief-making on Conservative foreign policy. MacShane is even quoted in the article - who knows, maybe he even prepared the materials?
The only serious charge made by Cohen is this:
"John Major's government at least tried to maintain good relations with our European allies. Cameron makes no effort."
Nothing could be further from the truth. Cohen might be excused for not knowing that the Conservatives have been working with the German CDU and the French UMP on joint policy papers. I am leading the team with the CDU on improving economic competitiveness, and working in a group with the UMP on localism. David Cameron was there for the launches of both sets of working groups. He has excellent relations with Angela Merkel, and when he, I and Mark Francois were in Paris two weeks ago, he and Nicolas Sarkozy got on famously. In fact, I happen to believe that David Cameron gets on better with both Merkel and Sarkozy than they do with each other. The British commitment to leave the EPP still stands, but that doesn't stop anyone from working together on areas where there is agreement. Cameron is also genuine friends with other Centre Right leaders like Fredrik Reinfeldt, Sweden's PM, and Mirek Topolanek, the Czech Prime Minister.
So contrary to Nick Cohen's assertion, David Cameron makes considerable efforts to maintain good relations with European allies. Cohen's technique of throwing together seemingly unconnected incidents to seek to illustrate a wider phenomenon of xenophobia is an interesting one. I wonder what he would make of someone who could only bring himself to spend three hours on a trip to Saudi Arabia to lecture King Abdullah on oil prices, a man who managed to offend everyone by first denying the British people a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and then upsetting his European partners by appearing ashamed to sign it at the ceremony in Portugal. A man who is the author of statements like "British jobs for British workers" and insists on "ID cards for foreign nationals."
So maybe Nick should ask this question - which foreigners DO you like, Gordon?