U.K. PM Cameron sucks up to Canada and Harper in Globe opinion pages
One of the newest national leaders to be visiting Toronto as part of the G20 is Kirk David Cameron, recently elected to head up the coalition Conservative–Liberal Democrat government in the U.K. Like our own Stephen Harper, Cameron came to power after humiliating the sitting PM, a man who had spent years in the shadow of a more popular and more politically successful leader. With so much in common, Cameron and Harper are apparently getting along like a house on fire, and he took to the pages of the Globe and Mail to tell us all about it:
• While I’m the new kid on the block, I know I have an old friend in Stephen Harper.
• The preparations that Prime Minister Harper has led have been thorough: the right first step, and I pay tribute to him and his team.
• Canada knows just how important [cutting spending] is—in the 1990s, you underwent a tough and successful program of spending cuts to get your debt down and economy back on track.
While most of the op-ed is about expanding trade (“it enables people in Muskoka to make money in Mumbai”), Cameron does briefly step on his new bestie’s toes by bringing up the bank tax that Harper loathes. The Canadian PM keeps trying to kill this idea, and more powerful leaders refuse to let it die. Like an unstoppable brain-eating zombie, Harper just can’t escape it.
How to stop this zombie? Well, we know where you can find a chainsaw, crossbow and cans of gasoline.
