David Cameron has said he and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch “have some different outlooks” on foreign aid and net zero, but that he is “a team player” and that she is “absolutely right” on the European Convention on Human Rights, in a Bloomberg interview with Mishal Husain published in full on Friday, 13 November.
Husain put it to the former prime minister that he had led the “greenest government ever” and protected aid, while Badenoch ostensibly wants to repeal the Climate Change Act and cut aid by “something like 90%.” In fact, Kemi Badenoch joined the Conservative Party as one of “Cameron’s Cuties” – a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) scheme – and backed his foreign aid commitments, especially to Africa.
Cameron told Bloomberg: “We do have some different outlooks, but I’m a team player. She is the leader of my team.” He added: “I try and give my advice privately if it’s required and I want her to do well.”
Asked whether Russia had swung the Brexit vote, Cameron said: “I don’t think it affected the outcome, no.” He accepted there were “Russian bots and influencers trying to influence the debate.” Asked whether Britain is poorer, he first said “No.” He then hedged: “that’s a very difficult question.”
Asked, “So if Kemi Badenoch is elected prime minister, you are available?” he said: “I’m absolutely available. I haven’t said that to her, but I’m very happy to, I better make sure I do.”
On the recent Tory about-face on Europe, he said: “The thing that might surprise you is on ECHR and all those sorts of things. I think she’s absolutely right.” He said “one of the reasons we’ve got such a problem with populism in our world is politicians of the center right and center left have not done enough to tackle illegal migration.”
Increasingly, however, it is not simply “illegal migration” that native populations have a problem with. Reform UK, the alternative party to the Tories on the right of British politics, are indeed committed to net negative migration into Britain. The Tory policy comes nowhere close.
Asked whether leaving the convention would stop the boats of illegal migrants coming to Britain, he said: “I think not on its own. Of course it won’t, but we have to do everything it takes.”
He said: “I have many, many disagreements with Donald Trump, let me tell you. But actually when he sort of shut the border right at the beginning of his term, he probably should have left it at that rather than all the ICE raids and everything else. But that moment he showed people, ‘I understand your concern about illegal migration and we put up with it for too long.'”
On the economy, he said “our economic problems are we are overspending, overborrowing, overtaxing, over-regulated, and far too much being spent on working-age welfare. Those are a set of problems that have nothing to do with Brexit.” “None of those got anything to do with Europe.”
He warned that if the government kept “producing this idea that we’re actually on a path to rejoining, I think you’re in danger of getting a less good partnership deal.” He added: “if you’re not going to commit to trying to make the partnership stronger because you’re flirting with rejoining, I think there’s some danger there.” This website reported that warning on 11 November, before the full interview was released. He does not think joining a customs union is “necessarily” the right answer, after Husain raised George Osborne’s support for one, and said “opening up all the arguments about free movement and all of that, I don’t think that is a very good use of our time.”
Asked about rejoining without another referendum, he said “Who knows where we will be,” but that “there is a role for referendums” on fundamental changes. He did not demand a new vote. “I don’t take back anything I said then.”
