David Cameron Gets Off on Wrong Foot

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s frenzied world tour has been rife with “gaffes,” according to various media reports. However, Hugo Rifkind, satirical columnist for The Times of London, and the son of MP and former Conservative Cabinet Minister, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, claims the spin from Britain’s Conservative Party that Cameron was merely “speaking his mind” is patently absurd. “It's a better strategy, surely, to think your mind, pick out some edited highlights, and speak those. Otherwise, what's the point of having a mind at all? You might as well just have your mouth wired up directly to somewhere else entirely,” said Rifkind. The three biggest gaffes highlighted by Rifkind include Cameron’s referring to Britain having been America’s “junior partner in 1940 when we were fighting the Nazis”; his gaffe in Ankara, Turkey, where he described the Gaza Strip as a “prison camp”; and, last but not least, Rifkind’s personal favorite, where the British PM suggested that Pakistan “looks both ways” when it comes to the global struggle between democracy and Islamism. Ultimately, this “was David Cameron speaking his mind by speaking the minds of other people,” said the cheeky Rifkind, deeming it “a pretty impressive performance.”