The Liberal Democrat leader and deputy PM Nick Clegg will be the United Kingdom’s representative at the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Summit in September as details begin to emerge over the actual role of Mr Clegg within the new Conservative-Liberal coalition.
Mr Cameron, while in Toronto, Canada this weekend as the leaders of the world’s biggest economist powers met, stressed to journalists in attendance that his Mr Clegg would not be running the country at any point this summer and said because of modern communications he could remain in charge, even while on the beach.“We don’t have to have this formal handover when we go on holiday,” he said. “I will have a decent break, but in this day and age of technology I don’t think it is necessary to have the carry on that the last government did.”
Under the previous Labour government, the deputy PM or another senior cabinet minister would be put in charge of running the country when the Prime Minister was on holiday – an arrangement that on the surface seemed to work well.
But Mr Cameron has seemingly decided to reassure the right-wingers in his own party who were (and still are) not favourable of the liberals in positions of power by promising it won’t happen. But, the refusal to hand over to the Lib Dem leader could risk upsetting the delicate balance of power between the two ruling parties – as if there wasn’t enough contentious issues (EU, VAT rise, Budget etc…).
In what looks an incredible move, it seems Mr Cameron and Clegg are drawing up plans for themselves and figures from the two parties to address each other’s party conferences this autumn.
Still unconfirmed and to be discussed further amongst the Cabinet soon, one option is for Mr Cameron to address the Liberal Democrat conference in Liverpool and Mr Clegg the Tories in Birmingham. But a more likely, at present, scenario is for the other Cabinet ministers to “change places” and speak at their coalition partner’s event.
In the meantime Mr Cameron wants Mr Clegg to play a key role on the international stage and has said his deputy will handle Britain’s relations with China while Mr Cameron builds closer links with India.
And so it will be Mr Clegg who will fly the British flag at important UN summit on aid to poor countries in New York in September, and although Mr Cameron insists this is not a ‘snub’ I cannot help thinking if such importance is placed on this summit, why is the country’s leader not attending.
Mind you, the summit is set to take place around the time that Mr Cameron’s wife, Samantha, is due to give birth to the couple’s fourth child - something that Mr Cameron alluded to when he answered a question today in the House by stand-in Labour Party leader Harriet Harman:
"I was intending to do so, but for reasons of paternal health-we have been talking about maternal health-I hope that I will be otherwise engaged in the UK, as we are having a baby. My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister will be at the summit and doing a very good job."
