So we’re up to 17 questions now!

Meanwhile, in the non-blogging world…

OK T. Rex

You can have the bone…..

I’m sure a vote will appear at some point in the EP that will fracture the ECR. The questions are ‘when’ and ‘on what’.

Another question: how do you square the fact that you are against the Lisob treaty and the leader of your new grouping isn’t?

“Why did Conservative MEPs, unlike their Labour and Lib Dem counterparts, refuse to support a European Parliamentary resolution, in September of this year, to criticise Lithuania for its passing of a law banning public discussion of homosexuality that has been condemned by Amnesty and other human rights watchdogs as an abuse of LGBT and young people’s human rights?”

Possibly because this is a matter of national, not European, policy-making, and therefore they feel that it is not their place to interfere? To take another, random, example, I do not remember any MEPs commenting on the Italian withdrawal of immunity from Mr Burlesconi, as this was a national issue also.

“What assurances can the Conservatives provide that their decision not to support the resolution criticising Lithuania was not in any way influenced by their alliance with Lithuanian MEP Valdemar Tomesevski, who is a supporter of the law in question, personally voted for it in his national parliament before becoming a MEP, and is on record as having described homosexuality as a ‘perversion’?”

See above. National soverignity is a sufficient explanation.

“What assurances can the Conservatives give that their positions on homosexuality, and a raft of other human rights issues arising at the European level, will not in future be decided, in whole or in part, by considerations of loyalty to their socially illiberal new allies in the ECR?”

At European level? Last time I checked, the European Parliament did not have soveriegnity over these issues.

As it happens, the questions on Michael Kaminski are more sensible than the badly typed hysterics of Mr McShane, although I think you will find the answer would be that the Conservative Party are taking Mr Kaminski on his word, and have no grounds to doubt it. However, it is hard to see how questions which are essentially about due diligence procedures will have any impact on electoral fortunes. As I have stated before, the Labour party has its own former extremists (if Ken Livingston can be called former in this case…) and its European allies include people with equally shady pasts as Mr Kaminski; some of them actually serving in or under totalitarian administrations of the sort Mr Kaminski clearly opposed. So the more this becomes about ‘how far can you trust this man has changed?’ the more the issue can be a case of shooting yourself in the foot. What this is basically boiling down to is one bunch of people asking another bunch do they actually trust someone else. If we ignore the attempts to conflate the idiocies of Lithuanian politics with European policy (a given for a party committed to a Europe of independent nations), then there is no real issue here. How much political capital is there in saying the Conservatives are allied in Europe to a man who during Communism was a member of a party which has since become clearly neo-Nazi, and sometimes uses inappropriate language.

There is probably plenty for those who believe in European federalism to criticise the Conservatives on. Perhaps it might be more productive to focus on these things and have an actual political debate.

Sunny,

“Another question: how do you square the fact that you are against the Lisob treaty and the leader of your new grouping isn’t?”

Would this be the same man you have been suggesting is a neo-Nazi and homophobe? Do you really want to align your point of view with his and show the Conservatives having a different one? Think lines of attack through…

“At European level? Last time I checked, the European Parliament did not have soveriegnity over these issues”

Are you seriously trying to suggest Tory MEPs do not take a position on matters under individual state jurisdiction? If so can you tell us when this policy was introduced?

@7

I’m saying that the shadow foreign secretary, (to whom the questions would be addressed) may have more sense than to suggest that his own parties MEPs start interfering in the affairs of another state. Look at the mess our actual foreign secretary has created with Latvia by only commenting on the actions of its politicians. If the question was would you agree with or oppose this measure in Britain, a far better question to ask, then I suspect Mr Hague would have to say oppose.

In all honesty, I’ve seen no sign of any MEPs respecting the boundaries of the European Parliments compotence in their personal statements (which is perfectly legitimate I suppose), but there is a difference between that and signing a parlimentary motion which is outside of that parliment’s compotence. That is gesture politics at best, and outside interference at worst.