Cameron the Naive-l

Last week, my brilliant friend Eoin Clarke wrote this about Cameron's ill-fated Egyptian visit. Now Eoin is scrupulously fair, non-partisan to a fault. You might notice he doesn't even mention the list of arms dealers he took with him. He does however, point out that :

 "Cameron is meeting all the opposition parties except for the most popular, Muslim Brotherhood. In rather explicit terms he is, rather naively the poor sod, gifting the Muslim Brotherhood a propaganda coup."


I'm not the only commentator today asking the question : Is Cameron just hopelessly naive? Or is there much more to it than that?


When he promised that,
 "any cabinet minister … who comes to me and says 'Here are my plans' and they involve frontline reductions, they'll be sent straight back to their department to go away and think again"


Was he really naive enough not to understand that you can't cut £83 billion - an amount never attempted before - without frontline cuts? 


When he promised that 


"Our plans involve cutting wasteful spending....our plans don't involve an increase in VAT. 
or "I wouldn't change child benefit, I wouldn't means test it, I don't think that's a good idea"
or "I Absolutely support the EMAs"
or"I will lead the greenest government ever"
or "It is sick and frankly disgusting to say we will end the two week cancer guarantee"


Could he possibly have meant all of those things at the time?


When he promised more midwives was he really naive enough to believe that he could deliver them?


When Lansley came to him with his NHS re-organisation plans, was he really naive enough to think that promising there would be "No more top-down re-organisation of the NHS" would be forgotten?


When Gove came to him and suggested scrapping the Building Schools for the Future fund, was he truly  naive enough not to realise that there would be massive uproar resulting in legal challenges?


When councils were told they must slash their budgets by 27%, was he really naive enough to think that this could be achieved through efficiency savings? Had he honestly come to believe his own rhetoric to the point where he thought this would not result in cuts to the very Big Society voluntary sector he hoped to nurture and develop? Really?


Perhaps most incredible of all, when he spoke of his personal experiences of disability through his son Ivan, when he explained how amazing the NHS had been, when he claimed to understand the lives of the millions of carers around the country in speeches like this :


"This is the support, trust and respect that parents of those with disabilities deserve. Because we can never forget what an amazing job they do. Just consider what it would mean if the army of parents and carers in this country gave up, packed up, said they couldn't cope any more. The financial cost of looking after those children would be immense"


Did he really believe his own words?  
Did he honestly think that he could make life better for the sick, the disabled and NHS patients at the same time as cutting housing benefit, freezing all other benefits, time limiting ESA, abolishing the Independent Living Fund, taking over 60% of sick or disabled people off ESA and 20% off DLA, limiting the Access to Work programme and removing mobility payments from adults in residential care?
Did he honestly not realise that this particular piece of touchy-feely Cameroonianism would come back to haunt him?   


There's a serious question here and neither answer is reassuring. Either he is the most bumbling, out-of-touch, naive, clueless, hapless politician ever to make it to the role of Prime Minister, or he is a cruel, opportunistic, liar who repeatedly and consistently said anything at all to get elected.


Eoin leans towards naive, I, of course, believe he is made of purest evil, but either way, it does not bode at all well for a country facing its toughest challenges for a generation.