Grownup Politics

Chris Selley recaps an interview given by Britain's opposition leader David Cameron, then adds the following:

“Reticent” isn't a word that comes to mind. What comes to my mind instead is that if either Michael Ignatieff or Stephen Harper had given that interview, Canadian politics-watchers would still be picking themselves up off the floor, and the appropriate war room would be tearing into the other guy like a pack of half-starved wolverines.

No one unfamiliar with politics would find these ideas particularly salacious, of course, and these weren't revelations either. Cameron has for some time been promising a period of general “austerity” under his Prime Ministership, with an eye to getting the books in order and throwing Standard & Poor's much-feared credit-raters off the trail.

Anyone who reads a newspaper knows lean times are coming to Canada too, one way or the other—tax hikes, spending cuts, or some combination of the two.

The difference between Ottawa and London is that in London, they're actually talking about it. Indeed, to hear Cameron talk, he actually thinks he's telling the British people what they want to hear. In Ottawa, all signs suggest we'll follow up our 2008 election, which managed to ignore a recession we all knew was coming, with a 2009 election that will ignore the fiscal measures necessary to recover from it. At least a few journalists have sworn in writing not to let the combatants get away with it this time.

We better hope they meant it.