THE lands between the Baltic and Black seas endured a 20th century of almost unimaginable horror: it brought war, genocide, famine, invasion, occupation, fascism, communism, economic turmoil and corruption. The politics and parties that emerged have been warped and confused by that awful past. They cannot fairly be judged by the standards of long-established democracies. But that does not mean, as Britain’s Conservatives almost seem to think, that they cannot be judged at all.

Earlier this year, David Cameron fulfilled a pledge to pull his Conservative members of the European Parliament out of the European People’s Party (EPP), the block to which they formerly belonged. Instead the Tory MEPs now form the core of a cobbled-together new group, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). One of their new partners is a mainstream centre-right party from the Czech Republic. But some of the others are less respectable. They include the Law and Justice Party of Poland, and in particular Michal Kaminski, a controversial MEP who has made remarks about homosexuals, and about a wartime massacre of Jews by Poles in Jedwabne (a town he once represented in the Polish parliament), which many find alarming.

…

But if this interpretation—charitable but plausible—mitigates the foolishness of Mr Cameron’s past decisions, it also raises an awkward question about his future.

It is this: if this shoddy, shaming alliance is the price he was obliged to pay his party for the changes needed to make it seem modern and compassionate, what sort of party is it that Mr Cameron leads? What else will its members demand, and what else—when his popularity and authority wane—will he be obliged to give them, after he becomes prime minister?

…more at The Economist

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