John McCain is a Cameron fan
Photograph: Dean Cox/AP The man who could be the next US president declared his admiration for David Cameron in an interview with the Times today. It's a very interesting piece, not least because of the (Freudian?) slip made by the Republican Senator John McCain: "From what I know of, and have seen of, Prime Minister Cameron, I mean Mr Cameron, I'm sure he and I are more philosophically aligned about the role of government [than I am with Tony Blair] because I'm more conservative myself."
Prime Minister Cameron? That won't go down well with Mr Blair, whom Mr McCain may well be dealing with if he runs and is elected in 2008. Nonetheless, even if the senator is a little shaky on the detail of British politics, his praise for the Tory leader will delight the Cameroons.
Because while Mr Cameron's team are keen to distance themselves from the Bush administration - and why not? Mr Bush will probably be long gone by the time the next general election rolls round - they would very much like to align themselves with a centrist Republican who is unafraid to criticise US conduct in Iraq.
Michael Howard and Mr Bush fell out over just that topic.
Note that Mr McCain, like the Tories, did not oppose the invasion. He is a Vietnam veteran with a hawkish record. But he has been highly critical of the way Mr Bush has prosecuted the war.
He also has a plain-talking appeal and a disdain for pork-barrel projects that endear him to many Democrats. (Mr McCain devotes a section of his website to particularly egregious examples of pork.) Intriguingly, he also tells the Times that he would like to see Congress adopt a version of prime minister's questions to make the proceedings livelier. (Ironically, of course, Mr Cameron has decried the "Punch and Judy politics" of the Commons.)
But if Mr Cameron and Mr McCain do start engaging in a transatlantic love-in, it will test the patience of the party's rightwingers even further. Some of them regard Mr McCain as a traitor.
