David Cameron: the Boy’s Own robot made of ham was nearly out-Foxed

How much have you really engaged with David Cameron, since he became foreign secretary in November? I always get a discombobulating strobe effect, all the alternative futures that could have been: the not-Brexit, the not-Boris Johnson, the not-austerity and social fracturing, if it hadn’t been for this rosy-face Duff Cooper in 21st-century fancy dress, and the incomprehensible number of people who didn’t take one look at that face and run a mile. So I find him quite hard to look at.

As he does the American media rounds, talking Ukraine and Gaza to wingnuts (Fox News) and sensible centrists (CNN), the look he’s going for is somewhat changed. You know what they say about America, that it went from barbarism to decadence without the intervening period of civilisation (no offence, Fox News!)

Cameron went from floppy young man in a hurry to elder statesman without the intervening period of regular, middle-aged statesman; did he ever really govern? Was he ever really real? Well, he must have been. Because all that stuff happened.

He was fresh from meeting Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago, which he couldn’t say much about because it was a private meeting – the US anchors of every channel nodded delightedly when he said that. I think it sounds saucy yet quaint when a posh person says it, but he said this much to This Morning on CNN: “The point I’m making is …” (ah, memories … Cameron saying, “Let me be clear on this point that I am making,” piping busy words, the catchphrase of a man who’s never once wondered whether he’s interesting) “is that I think profoundly in Britain’s interest, but also to America’s interests, that Trump doesn’t get to win in Ukraine.”

We can come to why not if you really think it’s necessary, but what a profoundly