The Tory leader may regret forsaking moderate leaders like Angela Merkel for the far right, says Mary Honeyball
When David Cameron fulfilled his “longstanding intention”, first articulated during his 2005 leadership campaign, to cut Tory ties with the European People’s Party, it was another indication that he is wholly misguided and short-sighted on the issue of Europe.
Cameron claimed that the EPP’s federalist views are at odds with Tory policy. Yet, on leaving it, he decided to link up with some of the most unsavoury and extremely right-wing bedfellows to form the new European Conservatives and Reformists group (ECR).
Cameron, like other Conservative leaders, has found it hard to reach a consensus in his party on the European Union. Unwisely, he has decided to pander to the far right.
Recently, the Observer revealed the Tories have been accused of being part of a “systematic cover-up” after someone at the House of Commons deleted internet details about the ECR leader, Polish MEP Michal Kaminski.
Embarrassing information concerning his previous membership of the ultra reactionary National Revival of Poland party was removed from Wikipedia by someone in the Commons three days after the Tories formed their alliance in June this year.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s speech to the Labour Party conference lambasted the Tories’ new European friends. The Latvian party now in partnership with the Conservatives has participated in a march commemorating the Waffen SS. Kaminski leads the homophobic Polish Law and Justice Party. In 2000, in a television interview, he called homosexuals “fags”. When challenged, he said: “That’s how people speak. What should I say? They are fags.”
The Tories’ new far-right friends do not stop with Kaminski. Vaclav Klaus, founder of the Czech Civic Democratic Party (ODS), is another deeply unpleasant individual. He has revelled in every minute of the media coverage his one-man efforts to scupper the Lisbon Treaty have received.
He is going against the wishes of the two houses of parliament in the country of which he is president, the constitutional court in the Czech Republic and the other 26 EU countries which have ratified the treaty. Klaus does seem to have the support of the British Tory leader. The ODS is one of the parties which make up the ECR. Again we see the Tories’ true colours reflected in the people with whom they choose to work.
Quite a dossier is emerging on David Cameron and what he is really about. He is too afraid to stand up to the Eurosceptics, but surely even he is beginning to regret leaving the EPP.
Now the Tory leader seems to totally at sea over whether or not to have his cherished referendum on Lisbon – always assuming he gets the opportunity, of course.
Mary Honeyball is a Labour MEP for London
