Well, at least he didn't apologise

Cameron's rather tenuous grasp of history should oblige his aides to steer his speech-making away from making historical pronouncements, particularly on foreign trips where the potential for damage, with foreigners being notoriously thin-skinned, is the greatest. In this latest case, he was asked on a visit to Pakistan how the UK could help resolve the Kashmir question. He replied “I don’t want to try to insert Britain in some leading role where, as with so many of the world’s problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place.”


Well, at least he didn't apologise. And on the face of it, it's not that extraordinary an answer. If he wasn't aware of the Radcliffe Line, he was aware that Britain oversaw partition in 1947, and perhaps Balfour's 1917 declaration is also in the Cameron mind. And historians will argue whether it wasn't Jinnah's intransigence rather than Mountbatten's mischief that was responsible for the issue in the first place, but still. 


Blair, of course, would have apologised profusely, being both sufficiently stupid and impertinent enough to blame our forebears for just about everything. Brown would have blamed someone else, or would have denied that Britain ever occupied India at all. Major would have avoided the issue altogether, and stressed the positive benefits of a shared love of cricket. And perhaps after all, what one needs on these foreign trips is an approach like that of John Major. Cameron please note.