UK Conservative Party leader David Cameron backs John McCain

Source: Daily Telegraph

David Cameron last night risked political isolation in Washington as he broke diplomatic convention by backing a candidate in the US presidential race. Speaking at a dinner hosted by Barclays Capital at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Conservative leader heaped praised on one of the Republican front-runners, John McCain.

By international convention, politicians do not enter into electoral politics in other countries and as the contest between the candidates in the Republican primary race is so close, Mr Cameron may have made tactical error in coming out so strongly for a contender whose victory is still not assured.

His words are also unlikely to impress the two leading Democrat candidates for the presidency, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

The Conservative leader said: “Every generation has to fight and win the argument for free trade and open markets. Just look at the presidential election in the US. On both sides of the political divide, there are candidates advocating protectionist policies. There is one clear exception - and I admire him a great deal for his stance. Senator John McCain did my party the great honour of addressing our annual conference two years ago, and we saw then the courage and conviction that saw him go to Michigan and tell the voters directly that the old jobs weren’t coming back and that protectionism was no answer to today’s economic problems. He didn’t win the primary, but he certainly won a lot of respect.”



Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=MRQLNPTURCHH3QFIQMGSFGGAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2008/01/24/wuspolls224.xml

....would enjoy welcoming prime minister Cameron to the White House in the future (in the event of the Tories winning the next general election of course).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/24/wuspolls224.xml

(the session id stuff after the semicolon gets screwed up in the DU link code, and isn't needed to get the story to display - just the '?xml=' stuff)

win the Whitehouse.