Cameron is wrong to suck up to Bush and ignore the issue of rendition

David Cameron has ruthlessly dumped Tory baggage on almost every pressing issue: tax, the economy, the environment, health, education, welfare, the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. There is, however, one exception. On foreign policy he has moved surprisingly sharply to the Right. In Europe he has broken with the centrist EPP and placed Conservatives uncomfortably alongside a miscellaneous collection on the semi-fascist fringe. More notable still, David Cameron’s Tory party is moving fast to improve links with the White House and the Republican party.

Domestically, David Cameron may have felt moved to renounce Margaret Thatcher. But internationally, he is sucking up to George Bush. This is an amazing state of affairs, so jaw-dropping in its apparent absence of all political logic that I am still wondering whether it can really be the case. Yet the evidence is compelling.

Consider first David Cameron’s conduct during the controversy over ‘extraordinary rendition’, which gained momentum with a hostile Council of Europe report this week. This document claims that the CIA has repeatedly been involved in the transfer of suspected terrorists to shady interrogation camps in countries where the use of torture is customary. In some cases the suspects appear to have been snatched from the streets of Europe and sedated before making their journey to these secret prisons. Tony Blair and the foreign secretary Jack Straw deny British knowledge and involvement. There are, however, strong grounds for suspecting that the British government has been complicit, at least to the extent of allowing CIA ‘ghost flights’, with their cargo of ‘rendered’ prisoners, to refuel at airports in the UK.