‘Forgotten’ man who links to Dave (From York Press)

‘Forgotten’ man who links to Dave

11:38am Tuesday 24th January 2012 in Columnists By Andrew Hitchon

ONE reasonably confident prediction for the political year ahead is that David Cameron’s European veto will continue to cause ripples in the corridors of power.

After his moment of triumph/infamy (depending on your view), some Tory enthusiasts compared him to Churchill, others to Thatcher. But a different figure from the Conservative past came to my mind – Stanley Baldwin.

Now largely forgotten, Baldwin dominated British politics in the 1920s and 1930s. He went to Harrow rather than Cameron’s Eton and Cambridge rather than Oxford, but Baldwin would have understood many of the challenges facing his 21st-century counterpart.

Industrial unrest? Baldwin was the PM who rode out the 1926 General Strike.

Coalition politics? Baldwin played a key role in ending the Tories’ partnership with the Liberal Lloyd George, but later took his party into a National Government with Labour’s Ramsay MacDonald as its figurehead Prime Minister.

Economic troubles? Baldwin presided over the response to the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Baldwin also had to cope with the Abdication Crisis of 1936, a little local difficulty caused by the accession of a self-indulgent new king following the passing of a highly respected monarch who had just celebrated a jubilee year. So clearly “Dave” needn’t have any worries about history repeating itself in that respect.

Like Cameron, Baldwin presented a comforting face in challenging times, rather than challenging his countrymen to get out of their comfort zones, in the style of Churchill or Thatcher.

Comparing our present PM with Baldwin is, arguably, a compliment to Cameron, since the former was a consummate political manager, who ensured his party dominated inter-war politics.

Baldwin’s speeches were also notably literate (he was a cousin of the writer Rudyard Kipling), in stark contrast to Cameron’s embarrassing use of contemporary slang (such as “I get it” and “go for it”).

But the reason I found myself thinking of Baldwin in the same context as Cameron can be found in an article in a Conservative-supporting newspaper shortly after the veto was deployed, by a commentator intent on praising Cameron.

The fascinating thing was that the writer expressed Cameron’s “triumph” almost entirely in terms of keeping the Conservative Party united behind him without (at that stage) wrecking relations with the Liberal Democrats – not whether or not his action had served the greater national good. This, remember, was from someone stressing what a good job Cameron had done.

As we know, the PM’s opponents subsequently used the “party first” argument as a stick to beat him with, while his backers insisted he had really stood up for Britain.

But if an experienced political commentator viewed Cameron’s actions primarily in terms of party management, it’s perhaps fair to assume quite a few others at Westminster saw it much the same way.

Decades earlier, Baldwin also faced accusations of having put the Conservatives first when faced with an international crisis more serious than the Eurozone’s troubles or even the Great Depression, by failing to rouse Britain to face the growing threat of war in the 1930s.

Churchill was particularly disgusted by a speech Baldwin made in 1936, when the latter said the British public would never have returned his government to power in the previous year’s General Election had he campaigned on a rearmament ticket.

It may be unfair to accuse Baldwin and Cameron of favouring party over principle; the former genuinely hated war, the latter may indeed have felt the City of London required special protection from Europe.

But Baldwin’s example should give Cameron pause for thought. The man Churchill called “the most formidable politician I ever encountered” is now only remembered, if at all, as the man who failed to stop Hitler and the slide into war.

If Cameron wants a lasting legacy, he may have to take some stands which are unambiguously for the whole nation rather than his party or his “pals in the City”. To achieve that he perhaps needs to follow Churchill’s lead rather than Baldwin’s.