THE front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination pays tribute today to David Cameron and what he calls the “new generation of leadership in the Conservative Party”.

In an interview with The Times, Senator John McCain says that he has been impressed by the “young men” from the Tory leader’s team whom he met on a recent trip to London, where they set out “a very enthusiastic and clear vision of the obstacles they have to overcome to get a new Conservative majority”.

He also suggests that the Conservatives have “something else going for them”, saying that the nature of democracy means that when a government remains in power for a long time, “parties change and that will happen again”.

But Mr McCain, who missed out on the Republican nomination in 2000 but has since emerged as an effective critic of George Bush, also lavishes praise on Tony Blair. He is “eternally grateful” for the courage the Prime Minister showed in his steadfast support for the US over Iraq.

He says Mr Blair also played an “incredibly important role” in pushing climate change to the top of the international agenda. He was “much more proud of Tony Blair” than he was of his own President at last year’s G8 summit. “I believe this Administration has made a terrible mistake by ignoring this issue, and future generations will pay a terrible price with every day that goes by.”

He has made regular visits to Britain, where he has previously met Mr Blair and Gordon Brown, as well as more recently George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor and Mr Cameron’s closest political ally.

Asked who he would prefer to deal with as prime minister, Mr Brown or Mr Cameron, the senator pointedly fails to mention the Chancellor and even momentarily forgets that the Tory leader has not yet won the election.

He says: “It’s hard for me to make a judgment [because] events determine relationships. From what I know of, and have seen of, Prime Minister Cameron, I mean Mr Cameron, I’m sure he and I are more philosophically aligned about the role of government because I’m more conservative myself. But the good news is that I cannot imagine a government in power in England which does not preserve the unique relationship with the US. I think that will last a long long time.”

Mr McCain, who was imprisoned for five years in Vietnam’s notorious Hanoi Hilton, has forced legislation through Congress designed to prevent the US ever using torture anywhere. Should Britain have taken a more robust stance in the current controversy over terrorist suspects being flown across the world? “I still don’t know what is going on. All I know is what I’ve read in the media and that has been denied by our Government.”

Why is he, as a Republican, a more vocal and effective opponent of the Bush Adminstration than Britain’s Labour Prime Minister? Mr McCain laughs and replies: “I don’t know.” He says that the attacks made on Mr Blair over the alleged misuse of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction are “implausible . . . just damn foolishness”.

The Arizona senator’s reluctance to criticise Mr Blair or the British Government reflects, in part, his strong Anglophile tendencies. He suggests that the US Congress should introduce its own version of Prime Minister’s Questions because “people get tired of the canned audience”.

Congress is currently mired in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and Mr McCain has been active in pressing for far-reaching reforms of campaign finance, disclosure of outside interests and the extensive use of so-called earmarking in Bills that are stuffed full of “pork barrel” spending projects. Can America learn from British efforts to eradicate parliamentary sleaze?

“There are lessons from some aspects of disclosure and other clean election rules which prevail in the UK,” he says, before pointing out key differences between the British and US systems. “Lobbying is a symptom of a system which is broken, not vice versa. They are just bad people taking advantage of a system which is broken.”

MILITARY MAN

Married with seven children and four grandchildren

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