Oranges are not the only fruit?

What are you trying to say?

Perhaps I was the only person that understood your post @ 8, and then you send me into utter confusion.

That wasn’t because he’s a fascist (which he is, but she doesn’t care half as much as I do). It’s because he’s black.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PPJ8spd0kNE/RsqZPofbH-I/AAAAAAAAABM/3eC-yxWUaBc/s1600-h/apples_oranges.jpg

You do realise this wasn’t actually his own personal dinner party. Because you seem a little unclear.

I am not and never will be an excuser of Margaret Thatcher. The photograph simply displays her discomfort at shaking hands with Mugabe. And shaking hands with filth (a mutual feeling in the recorded exchange) is the way of diplomacy, unless you are an ultra. Politicians have to glad hand and good luck to them with their consciences.

@20 DHG: “…having said that, Hitler had fine posture…”

And he probably cracked far wittier non-racist, non-homophobic, non-disablist lines than DHG.

He simply said that (as you quote)
“This development [i.e. the news that Kaminski visited Downing Street] spells the end of crude attempts by Labour to portray Cameron’s European allies as neo-Nazis.”

Which it would and indeed (in part) probably has.

It is difficult to attack your own past dinner guest as a “neo-Nazi” without looking a little silly.

That’s all – but also enough.

Plus the Poles and Latvians are getting a bit pissed at a very painful part of their history being used as a domestic football by someone supposedly in the running to be a high euro panjandrum.

This horse is now dead.

As for the example of the Tories turning a blind eye to homophobia, I think there is indeed an argument that this is not related to the ECR. One of the main points about the Tories’ position in Europe is that they do not believe that it is the role of the European Parliament to interfere in the domestic policies of the member states – their abstention on this vote would seem to be an example of this.

Your second reproduction of Crawford’s point adds nothing to the first, and, in particular, does nothing to make it more plausible. Sure, members of the Law and Justice party were wined and dined by Labour under Blair. But it is simply a non sequitur to say either that, consequently, there can be no reasonable concerns raised about Kaminski, or even that Labour itself cannot raise such concerns. Or is it your claim that no government is ever able to say, in effect, ‘We did not mention issue X last time we met, but nonetheless we have serious concerns about it’? Surely you do not think that, e.g., the government forfeits the moral authority to challenge China on human rights just because that issue is not raised in every phone call.

I am not a Labour Party strategist, so even if this is a dead-end in vote-winning terms, that does not preclude my pursuing it. The public do not care about many things that are worth caring about. In particular, they are often apathetic, as I’m sure you would agree, about human rights issues abroad. Is it a mistake to write about these issues, in the hope of raising their profile? Clearly not. Obviously Tories themselves do not care about the social illiberality of their allies, and they therefore exhort others to stop caring also. But do not be misled into thinking that, just because you yourself do not care, there is nothing here to care about.

As for why the focus is on the Tories, there are already signs that, following the creation of the ECR, the Conservatives are failing to take a strong line against homophobia (see here). Is that failure attributable to the desire to avoid rocking the boat with their new allies? By all means argue that the answer to that is ‘no’. But do not try to tell me that the Tory refusal to condemn LGBT rights abuses in the EU is not something that I ought to care about.

Anyway, that will have to be my last word for now.

And Crawford’s point is that the UK Government did not regard PiS as an extremist far-right party when they needed them as an ally for their European policy. Nor were they at all concerned then about any of the issues that now seem so important to them. Which makes it all look like a contrived attack based on domestic party political priorities.

I can fully understand why the left are so keen on this story. But dear God is it boring now. I suspect that its electoral resonance is going to be as close to nil as makes no difference (see the recent ICM polling? The Tories are four points further ahead than Tony Blair was at this point in 1996) and constant shouting about the domestic politics of Polish MEPs just makes you look a bit weird. Why do you care? Why (hurrah! Whataboutery!) aren’t you equally up in arms about the Greens and the Nationalists (paedophilia being worse, to my mind, even than homophobia)? If opposition to gay marriage is what riles you, why aren’t you livid about any British political party being allied with virtually any Eastern European country?

Charles Crawford’s argument, such as it is, is totally specious. The question at hand is: Is it appropriate for the Tories to be part of a formal parliamentary coalition with the Law and Justice Party, and submit to the leadership of a senior member of that party?

For that, what matters is what Law and Justice actually stand for. What does not matter is whether Labour were late to the party in condemning Law and Justice. Clearly it would have been much better if they had offered criticism earlier, and they should be rebuked for not having done so (and why would you think that we are incapable of doing so? It is as though you believe the left-liberal blogosphere has never been known to object to foreign policy under Blair). But we are where we are. Does the fact that Labour were silent for too long mean, by implication, that Law and Justice are not socially illiberal after all? That it is not true that they have banned gay pride marches, and discussion of homosexuality in schools? That it is not true that Kaminski has been caught misrepresenting the details of his political history to the British press? Clearly it does not change the facts on these things one iota.

Likewise, your quotation from Benn is irrelevant. The only point that this post set out to make was that, even if Kaminski once went to Downing Street, that does not exonerate him, or mean that criticisms of the Conervatives’ parliamentary alliance with him are unfounded. The Benn quotation is, if anything, grist to my mill, since nobody on either the left or right would suggest that Mugabe is off the hook just because Benn once praised him.

Finally, this is not whataboutery. Guido and other right-wingers have claimed that Kaminski cannot be a bad guy if he once dined in Downing Street. I rebutted that claim. That is all there is to it.

Robert Mugabe has won the Rhodesian elections outright. It is a fantastic victory and I can’t remember anything that has given me so much pleasure for a long time. When I think of the systematic distortion of the British press, it’s an absolute disgrace. The Tories must be furious.

And hang on a second – isn’t this whataboutery? I think LibCon ought to decide whether it approves of whataboutery or not…

When the Law and Justice party won the 2005 general elections, there were a few progressive squeaks about the fact that European Civilisation had just ended since Poland had been kidnapped by wild anti-semitic homophobes.

Closer examination suggested that this was not in fact the case.

Which was why in successive high-level meetings between PM Tony Blair and Polish leaders there was not one word of concern expressed publicly or privately by the British side on these scores.

I know because I was in on all these meetings.

And, yes, in 2005 Michal Kaminski himself was there at the No 10 dining-table next to PM Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, scoffing prawn cocktail as Tony Blair’s guest.

If David Miliband will not apologise to Michal Kaminski and sticks to his guns that Kaminski is a disgrace, maybe he should then apologise to the British people for Labour using taxpayers’ money to host such a disgraceful person at this high level and then resign?

And while he is at it, he also might explain why not a single word of instructions issued to us in Warsaw from London to take up with the Polish side issues of anti-semitism, Jedwabne and all this other stuff.

What in fact happened was that the Labour leadership energetically supported by D Miliband instructed the Warsaw Embassy to get as close as we could to the Kaczynskis and their party, to help align them with us in successive big negotiations over the EU Budget (2005) and Lisbon Treaty (2007).

Which is what my team and I did, with excellent results – and much praise from the FCO and No 10.

In other words – the Labour Party viewed PiS as important strategic allies within Europe, and were entirely unconcerned about any of the issues about which they are now shouting. It was only when they started to see the PiS as a stick with which to beat the Tories that any of it became interesting.

http://charlescrawford.biz/blog/even-yet-more-further-labour-kaminski-nonsense

That was good – straight from the pages of Heat. I’m surprised he didn’t draw rings on the picture highlighting Mugabe’s sweaty patches*.

(* which, to be fair, are undoubtedly legion)

I think my favourite is Charlieman excusing Thatcher based on her posture…

I suspect the attacks will fizzle out anyway.

Hi Sally – back from the asylum I see.

The man is full of hot air. He has gone from claiming to be against all politicians to being nothing more than a Tory ass licker. The fact that he now defend Doris tory who wants the govt to regulate womans bodies just shows that his pretend libertarianism is a pile of rat shit.

What you took Guido to mean bears no relation to what he actually said. To repeat, his words were:

This development [i.e. the news that Kaminski visited Downing Street] spells the end of crude attempts by Labour to portray Cameron’s European allies as neo-Nazis.

I am shocked, SHOCKED at such tactics.

By the way, always funny to see Cjcjcjcjcjcj defending his beloved tory party even though he lied on here by trying to claim that he does not support the tory party.

For someone who does not support the tory party he spends a lot of time on here sucking them off.

Eh?

Surely the point, such as it is, of the Blair photo, if it exists, is that it’s not just Cammo who is happy to hobnob with Kaminski. It says nothing either way about Kaminski himself.

Yes, but that was not Guido’s take on it. Guido said that the existence of the Downing St photo would exonerate Kaminski. When clearly, as the post shows, even if the photo exists, it will do no such thing.