The Cam-Kam is the Euro right’s new tango. Denis MacShane hopes it doesn’t catch on
Welcome to the Cam-Kam, the new dance of the European hard right. Choreographed by William Hague, the new dance-master for the Europe-hating media and his fellow Tory millionaire MPs, the Cam-Kam allows those who embrace some of the worst aspects of 20th century politics – dislike of Jews, gays, immigrants – to prance and preen on the European stage.
Named after the alliance between Britain’s David Cameron and Michal Kaminski of Poland’s Law and Justice party, the Cam-Kam is reminiscent of the worst of ultra-nationalist politics. It shows a side of the Tory leader that is far removed from the image his spin-doctor, Andy Coulson, wishes to promote of him: the heir to Tony Blair who is raising politics to a higher plane.
As a child of the post-1968 liberated and liberal Notting Hill classes, it is almost impossible to conceive of Cameron as possessing a gram of anti-gay or anti-Jewish prejudice. On the contrary, he has spoken warmly of the values and contribution of the Jewish community in Britain and those who have heard him speak do not doubt the sincerity of his views.
Equally, he has promoted gay Tories in his Shadow Cabinet and apologised for the Conservatives’ homophobic line on Section 28.
So why has he formed this alliance against his own nature with Kaminski, a Polish right-wing politician whose views on Jews, gays, immigrants and Barack Obama would place him at the very rough end of the British National Party in this country?
The Conservatives like to pretend that Kaminski’s extreme views belong to those of an exuberant youth and have even compared him to the Jewish John Bercow, who was a staunch right-winger in his days as a student political activist.
Kaminski was part of the European National Front under the leadership of Robert Fiore, the Italian fascist. This included the Spanish Falange and other far-right parties in its ranks. Kaminski made a personal pilgrimage to see former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet when he was detained in Britain. His apologists say all this belongs to the past.
But Kaminski’s utterances on Jews, his handing out of leaflets at Warsaw station urging Ukrainian immigrant workers to go home and his advocacy of Polish jobs for Polish workers have all taken place this century.
Kaminski protests that he is not anti-Semitic. However, what other adjective should we use to describe a man who organised a campaign against the brave decision of then Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski to apologise for the massacre of Jews by Polish villagers in 1941?
To put it politely, Polish nationalist politics has always had difficulties with the Jewish question. The pre-war National Democratic Party (Endecja) of Roman Dmowski was profoundly anti-Semitic. In 1968, the Communist government expelled Jewish students and intellectuals who later played a key role in exile in supporting the creation of the Solidarity trade union.
Bronislaw Geremek was one of the stars of that union movement, later Poland’s foreign minister and an MEP. He was Jewish. When he was killed in a car accident last summer, supporters of the anti-Semitic Radio Maryja, the nationalist Catholic conservative media group, held up a poster at his funeral saying: “Thank you God for taking him away.”
On the list of candidates for the 2009 European elections, headed by Kaminski, were people who openly espouse racist views.
Sadly, this is the world of religious right-wing politics in Poland. However, it is not neo-Nazi. When the Chief Rabbi in Warsaw was attacked, he received a sympathetic call from current Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who is Kaminski’s mentor. Further, most Polish rightists support Likud in Israel, as the Jewish question in Poland is about national politics, not about the Middle East.
Nonetheless, it is still odd that David Cameron has led the Tories into an alliance with a man whose views on Jews would not be deemed acceptable in Britain, let alone the United States.
The ruling Civic Platform party in Poland is similar to the British Tories: pro-market, patriotic, sceptical about Brussels and vaguely liberal. So why didn’t the Conservatives form a more natural alliance with Civic Platform?
Some analysts see the roots of the Cam-Kam alliance in Cameron’s campaign for the Tory leadership, when he promised to leave the centre-right European People’s Party in what was a bid to cosy up to the anti-European Union hardliners in his party.
But Cameron has reneged on previous promises and it remains a mystery why he has chosen Kaminski, of all politicians in Europe, to be his new ally. The upside is all for the Pole, but what benefit does Cameron get? It may well be that the Cam-Kam tango ends in tears. In the unending Euro political dance, it is important to choose your partners very carefully indeed.
Denis MacShane is Labour MP for Rotherham and a former Europe minister
