David Cameron’s trip to Washington reminded me of something @thejimsmith on Twitter said. Cameron, he said, reminded him of a dog that doesn’t realise you know he’s trying to steal food.
Anyone who’s ever had a dog will recognise this. Ours wasn’t allowed to beg at the dinner table, and he would sit and wait across the kitchen, until he realised he could shuffle towards us on his backside without getting out of the sitting position, with an expression of optimistic cunning on his little face. He was always really surprised to be rumbled, as if he couldn’t imagine how anyone could have seen through his brilliantly subtle plan.
A really clever dog, at this point, will open his or her eyes wide and probably charm something out of you anyway, making the whole thing part of his spiel. But that’s only the really clever ones and this one, for all his good points, wasn’t. Dogs aren’t usually self-aware enough to realise that you might be able to predict their thought-processes.
As dog, so Prime Minister. Ours was a flatcoated retriever; Cameron is more of a smiley, bland golden lab. The other day he accidentally promised to ban all cryptography. To be clear, re-opening the 1990s crypto wars isn’t a government policy. Nobody seriously thinks it’s possible or even desirable. Cameron probably remembered that he needed to push the communications data bill, and then that this was an Internet question.
Rather like my old dog, he responds to different situations by pulling on one of a range of personas. There’s a cat in the garden? Charge to the back door, bark like hell, and try to look fierce. A question on the economy? Make your stern face and say “debt” a lot. A new visitor? Slobber all over their left arm and wag your tail as hard as you can. Don’t know what to do? Ed Balls has a funny name!
Someone’s asking a vaguely technical question? Well, do your trendy dad bit. Concerned face, say “children” or “families”, and mention the two fashionable (roughly) mobile apps your press secretary told you to memorise. So he starts guffing about Whatsapp and Snapchat. It’s a sort of jarring spin mashup.
Now, though, he’s in a fix. Although nobody really believes this is a policy, everyone feels obliged to treat it as such. They pretend to govern and we pretend to be outraged. There’s a lot of it about. There’s no way in which this statement will ever cause anything to happen, but giving up looks bad. What now? Bark? Wag? Both?
But he has a plan. Now, British politicians often go to Washington because it is thought that appearing at the White House is popular. God knows why, but they seem to believe it, and it takes on some reality because they believe it. David Cameron is no different on this score, but who else would stage a major diplomatic event just so as to get photographed with Obama before the elections and tell the newspapers in advance that was why he was doing it. More than once.
So here he goes, shuffling across the kitchen towards the biscuits, on his arse, making his Good Dog face. Suddenly, the putative SSL ban is meant to be on the agenda. Or something is. But Barack Obama is, of course, a dog owner and he immediately calls him out. He flips into his constitutional law prof mode and…Bad dog, Dave. No biscuit.
the president conceded that there is an important balance to be struck between monitoring terror suspects and protecting civil liberties.
As Cameron warned the internet giants that they must do more to ensure they do not become platforms for terrorist communications, the US president said he welcomed the way in which civil liberties groups hold them to account by tapping them on the shoulder…
Brilliant.