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Posts tagged Michal Kaminski
Conservative defector condemns party’s ‘vile letter’ and hostility towards Europe
Mar 14th
MEP Edward McMillan-Scott accuses Tories of euro-scepticism and ‘double standards’ for expelling him while only suspending Lord Archer
The former leader of the Tories in Europe launches a scathing attack on David Cameron’s Conservatives today, accusing them of “visceral euroscepticism”, “twisted” thinking and bullying tactics that forced him out of the party.
Edward McMillan-Scott, who defected to the Liberal Democrats on Friday, has also accused the Tories of “extraordinary double standards” for expelling him permanently, having only suspended Lord Archer, who was sentenced to four years in prison for perjury in 2001.
Writing in today’s Observer, McMillan-Scott, who remains a vice-president of the European parliament, says the Tories unleashed a “campaign of vilification” against him after he claimed that Michal Kaminski, the Polish MEP who now leads their centre-right group in the EU, had an antisemitic, homophobic and racist track record.
A strong pro-European and member of the Tory party for 43 years, McMillan-Scott gives voice to years of frustration at the party’s hostile attitudes to the EU under present and past leaders, including William Hague.
In his outspoken attack on the party over its handling of his expulsion, McMillan-Scott says he has been smeared by Tory press officers who have tried to claim he is the one who holds antisemitic views.
He adds that they have distorted facts about his defection and claims that the party produced no documents to support its case when he appealed against expulsion. “I am not bitter, but they are twisted. It is not a nice party now,” he writes.
He accuses Cameron of tolerating eurosceptics who depart from the party line while persecuting him, a pro-European, for daring to express sincerely held doubts about the leadership credentials of a controversial fellow MEP.
“David Cameron shields his europhobes,” he writes. “No murmur was made when last weekend Lord Tebbit in effect encouraged Conservatives to vote Ukip in the general election against the Speaker, John Bercow. The dog whistle is really at a lower pitch: that Ukip supporters know that there is a real home for them, back in the Conservative party.”
Last night, speaking from the Liberal Democrat spring conference in Birmingham, McMillan-Scott said the party had shown “massive double standards” by expelling him while suspending Jeffrey Archer for five years.
When the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, mentioned McMillan-Scott’s name at a rally on Friday night there was a huge roar from activists. Yesterday he was seated in the front row for a question-and-answer session, so Clegg could welcome him.
The row over McMillan-Scott blew up last year when he stood as vice-president of the European parliament against Kaminski, who was Hague’s choice. Following McMillan-Scott’s stand, Timothy Kirkhope, leader of the Conservative MEPs, withdrew the party whip.
On 15 September, without any prior notification, McMillan-Scott was expelled from the Conservative party after 25 years as an MEP, four years as leader of the MEPs and three years on the party’s board.
• Hague is also likely to come under fire if he declines an invitation to appear this Thursday before a parliamentary committee investigating the granting of a peerage to Lord Ashcroft .
The three Tory members of the public administration committee – David Burrowes, Ian Liddell-Grainger and Charles Walker – have already said that they will not attend the one-off meeting, at which confidential Cabinet Office records relating to the decision to grant Ashcroft a peerage in 2000 will be discussed.
But the event is now in danger of running into farce. Ashcroft, a “non-dom” who does not pay UK tax on his overseas earnings, is unlikely to appear in person and Hague, too, looks doubtful.
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MEP defects to Liberal Democrats after Tory links with extremists
Mar 12th
Edward McMillan-Scott tells David Cameron he is leaving party because it propagates ‘extremism abroad’
A former leader of the Conservatives in the European parliament today defected to the Liberal Democrats in protest at the Tories’ decision to form a group with “extremist” politicians.
Edward McMillan-Scott, a veteran campaigner for human rights who led the Tory group in Strasbourg between 1997-2001, told David Cameron he was leaving the party because it propagates “extremism abroad”.
In a statement released to coincide with the opening of the Lib Dem spring conference, the vice-president of the European parliament said: “I have long fought against totalitarianism and the extremism and religious persecution it brings. It was wrong of Cameron to associate with MEPs who have extremist pasts.”
McMillan-Scott was deprived of the Tory whip last year after he stood successfully for the vice-presidency of the European parliament. This meant that the Tories’ key new European ally, the Polish MEP Michal Kaminski, was deprived of the post.
Kaminski then insisted on assuming the leadership of the Tories’ new group, the European Conservatives and Reformists, formed after last year’s European Parliamentary elections in the wake of Cameron’s pledge to withdraw from the mainstream EPP-ED group.
Kaminski, a member of the rightwing Law and Justice party, opposed a national apology in 2001 for the notorious anti-semitic pogrom at Jedwabne in which hundreds of Polish Jews were burnt to death in a barn in 1941.
In a letter to Cameron, McMillan-Scott wrote: “You continue to refuse to accept that Michal Kaminski, who now leads the ECR and against whom I stood and won re-election as vice-president of the European parliament last July, has had ‘antisemitic, homophobic and racist links’. You say that you are against extremism at home, yet you propitiate it abroad.”
In an article for the Yorkshire Post the MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber wrote: “It was wrong of Cameron to associate with MEPs who have extremist pasts in his new European alliance.
“Next Tuesday, his associates in Latvia will no doubt join, as usual, in commemoration of the role of the Waffen SS during the war. His partners in Poland will continue to voice their opinions on the vile anti-Semitic Radio Maryja and preach homophobia.”
McMillan-Scott’s remarks about Latvia were a reference to Roberts Zile, a member of the For Fatherland and Freedom Party (LNNK), some of whose members commemorate the Latvian Waffen SS. Zile says the ceremony, attended by members of other political parties, is to commemorate soldiers fighting for independence from the Soviet Union.
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