Stupidest PM comment since we helped Napoleon whap George Washington's backside?

[steepholm]

This simply isn't the kind of thing David Cameron should be making a "slip of the tongue" about. For someone in his position, especially, forgetting what happened between Dunkirk and Pearl Harbour is like not knowing one's ABC.

But, since 1940 has evidently been forgotten, are we now doomed to repeat it?

Comments

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I don't see how anyone could say "1940" and mean "the 1940s" though.

Same way one could say "Obama Beach" and mean "Omaha Beach" or "Hubert Horatio Hornblower" and mean "Hubert Horatio Humphrey."

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

If 1940 were just any old date, then I'd agree - but it's got an iconic status that makes a mistake with reference to it more than just a mistake. It's rather as if Obama had referred "to the terrorist attacks on 912".

[sheenaghpugh]

Or even on 11/9....:)

[calimac.livejournal.com]

And Omaha Beach is not iconic?

And in the US, I assure you that at the time of his death Hubert Humphrey was also pretty damned iconic.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Not as iconic in Britain, no - though D-Day as a whole certainly would be. Omaha was an American beach, iirc: it might well have been an equivalently-bad slip had an American politician made it. Even as it was, it was a first-class goof, I'll happily admit. But Cameron not only got it wrong, he took a date synonymous with Britain's "standing alone" and used it as an exemplum of Britain's being a junior partner. Coming from a British Prime Minister, that's about as bad as it gets.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I understand the profound awfulness of this. But I continue to believe it was a crude and egregious attempt to flatter his hosts, rather than a clumsy stumbling over his own tongue - a Brown thing to do rather than a Cameron thing - and surely not an actual case of forgetting or of not knowing. That last would require intelligence on a Sarah Palin level, and I doubt you have politicians of such aggressive ignorance in Britain.