London: Former British Prime Minister David Cameron is rebuilding his reputation as a world-class foreign secretary and British diplomacy is forever defined by Brexit.
The 57-year-old is once again a prominent figure on the world stage, visiting dozens of countries since his surprise return from a political wilderness that included a lobbying scandal last November.
With opinion polls suggesting that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s ruling Conservative Party will lose this year’s general election, Cameron knows that Britain’s top diplomat may be short, so he seized the opportunity.
“I think it’s about rebuilding his image after Brexit and some of the things that happened when he left office,” Simon Fraser, a senior official at the Foreign Office during Cameron’s prime ministership, told AFP.
“He’s a man with a personal mission.”
Cameron, who became prime minister in 2010, resigned in July 2016 after Britain voted to leave the bloc following a 2016 EU referendum.
He retreated to a £25,000 ($31,000) shepherd’s hut in his garden to write his memoirs as parliament debated what Brexit would look like.
Cameron launched the scandal in 2021 after lobbying the government for the collapsed financial group Greensill Capital.
He has also come under fire for promoting Chinese investment projects at a time when senior British MPs are calling for stronger action against Beijing.
“His reputation is badly damaged,” Anand Menon, director of the UK-based think tank Changing Europe, told AFP when the investigation brought him in from the cold.
“I’m sure he had a sense of unfinished business when he decided to take the job.”
His return to British politics after more than seven years shocked Westminster, with commentators and opposition MPs pointing to his mixed foreign policy record as prime minister.
They cited Britain’s failure to respond to a suspected chemical attack by Syrian government forces in 2013 and its key role in the 2011 international intervention to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi in the 2011 Libyan crisis.
Speaking on Thursday, Cameron said he was “determined to make every day count” in his six months as foreign secretary.
At his own expense, he has visited 33 countries on six continents, including Ukraine, Israel and the United States, and has urged Republicans from Donald Trump to open up military aid to Kiev.
Cameron became the first British foreign secretary to visit Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, even as far as the Falkland Islands.
“He’s a quick man,” she said.
Allies say he likes to use his influence and contacts as prime minister, injecting energy and gravitas abroad after his predecessors, such as Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.
“He’s got experience on big issues and he certainly has the international stature and the network that gives him the kind of access that we see with Trump,” he said.
Menon said Cameron was a “smooth operator, a great speaker” who made a difference in the world of diplomacy.
The campaign said Cameron was relying on overseas work to focus on his domestic agenda and trying to reverse the double-digit deficit to the main Labor opposition ahead of the election.
Some in Westminster are calling Cameron a “foreign prime minister”.
Insiders feel they have the right to take more risks, such as meeting with Trump, because he is an unelected member of the House of Representatives and not a member of the Conservative Party in parliament.
Observers say Israel has been more critical of the deadly Hamas attack than other ministers and that Britain could recognize the Palestinian situation before the peace deal was struck.
“If you look at Gaza, I think it gives American politics more nuance and a different voice to British politics, which is a shadow of previous American politics.”
But it remains to be seen what kind of legacy Cameron will leave behind, because he could become the new foreign secretary after the election.
“He’s a talented, classy guy, meets the right people, travels a lot, people seem to listen to him.
“You can’t ask for more from him,” says Menon.
