David Cameron

David Cameron Facts and Information

The Rundown

Holy freakin’ fish’n’chips! Great Britain’s got a ballsy new prime minister who is attempting to push through sweeping economic and political reform at an epic pace! So who is the lively limey in charge of the world’s 6th largest economy, declared nuclear power, and major US ally? Cherio chaps! It Prime Minister David Cameron…and he is a budget-slashing, de-centralizing, radical… conservative?!? Say what? A conservative enacting radical change, and in his first 6 months in office? Hell yeah he is…well at least he is going to try. Why so much change, so fast?

It comes from the fact that merry ol’England, and all the rest of their United Kingdom, is facing a financial crisis rivaled only by those gangly Greeks or poor-ass Portuguese…in other words, they are broke. Now, everyone is having hard times in the world recession, but the issues facing the economies of the rest of the G-8 pale in comparison to ?the sinking ship that is the British economy. And Cameron is kickin’ it into high gear to salvage the skiff…

Brand new to the Prime Minister position, Mr. Cameron has quickly become one of the most energetic and pro-active British leader in modern times…and comparisons are already being made to the conservatives’ ultra-heroine: “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher was the leader of the UK in the 1980’s who trashed unions, slashed government spending, privatized national industries, pushed free-market policies and social conservative ideology. She was to the UK what Ronald Reagan was to the US, oh, except she’s not dead yet. If Cameron has his way, he will be duplicating the Thatcher era in the 21st century.

This titanic effort by one of the UK’s youngest prime ministers can end in several ways; Cameron could steer his country straight into the looming iceberg and sink his countries already listing economy; he could be the next Lord Admiral Nelson and not survive the victory he creates; or he could be heralded as the next Thatcher and guarantee the survival of his country and career.

In the Avenger’s assessment, it’s mainly a toss up between the second two options, as England is unlikely to drown any time soon, but don’t be surprised if Cameron is calling for lemonade and brandy before the battle is over. Wait a minute, lemonade and brandy…isn’t that a shandy? But I digress, let’s get caught up on Cameron…David Cameron is a descendant of high English and Scottish society, even tracing his lineage back to some bastard children of King William IV – sometimes, illegitimacy ain’t such a bad thing. His wife his wife is even the daughter of a viscount! What the hell is a viscount? I don’t know, but it sounds regal! He is also an Eton and Oxford educated man, which to us American types is the equivalent of a stuffy Harvard preppie boy. Ew. So far he sounds like a typical white-bread, blue-blazered, upper-class, pinky-up tea-sipping toff!

?But he turned out to be a pretty down-to-earth, likable chap. The man has spent most of his life working for the Conservative Tory Party, including as a member of Parliament in the House of Commons before taking over as the Leader of the Conservative Party in 2005. Since then he has been building his support as the leader of the opposition to first Tony Blair and then Gordon Brown’s liberal Labour Party governments that dominated the UK for the last 13 years. But that Labour run ended in 2010 when the Brits decided they needed a change…a change named Cameron.??He did not, however, gain enough support to outright form his own government—-see, the Prime Minister position is appointed by the political party with a majority in Parliament, and in this case the Conservatives had the most seats but not the majority of seats….make sense?  So they had to form the UK’s first coalition government (a partnership with a smaller political party named Liberal Democrats) since Churchill’s government in the Second World War.

This has created an interesting dynamic for Cameron’s office, as the Deputy Prime Minister (2nd in command) is the leader of the Lib Dems, as they are called. This leader, Nick Clegg, and the party as a whole have quite a bit in common with the Conservative Party despite what their names imply. They each favor budget cuts and decentralization of the government but they disagree on the extent to which each should occur. This was posed to be a major problem for the radical policies of David Cameron until, fortunately for him, the Greek economy completely freakin’ failed and scared the redcoat shit out of everyone in the UK and Europe in general.

That failure and the subsequent riots in the streets of Athens were all the inspiration the Lib Dems needed to jump on board with Cameron’s crazy cuts and paved the way for what has turned into an effective, if not bold and risky, working relationship within the current government.

And that’s a good place to wrap up this brief bio on the Brit with an even briefer record in office. Why do I keep saying he is radical and may be shaking up the system so much as to be worthy of watching? Not unlike many other leaders of Europe, Cameron inherited an economy that had shrunk more in the past two years than at any other time since the Great Depression, saddled with a huge deficit and government debt, excessive levels of immigration that are straining the resources of the state and causing a backlash of public opinion. So what? Germany, France, Japan, and even the US are in that boat.

So true. But unlike all the other leaders of those other states, Cameron is proposing a major, major, major-general of an overhaul of the government in its entirely! And not just slashing government benefits, slashing government expenditures, and slashing government budgets…yes, he is doing that too! Promising to balance the budget, reel in spending, and chill out immigration is just the beginning. Cameron’s real goal is to redistribute political power from the national level down to the state and even local levels as much as possible. Let the locals pick their school boards, decide their taxes, and provide the benefits their citizens want…decreasing reliance on the central government altogether.

Damn! Spike your Earl Grey and do that shooter, Brits! We are talkin’ about a huge shift in both the role and the size of the central federal government! That is radical! That my friends is why the western world will be watching “Cameron’s way” with a interested eye. You heard it here first: if this shizzle works in Great Britain, look for the Cameron plan to be embraced and duplicated by conservatives the world over…even the Tea-baggers and Republicans in the US will grab it as a roadmap of action for their own political movements.

Will the UK sink or swim? Stay tuned, as the results of England’s gambit will be known ?soon enough. And the rest of the world will know if they should jump in after those crazy Limeys. God save the Queen! Or at least the British economy!

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