Diane Dodds (1), the newly elected DUP MEP, has said she is "not in politics to make friends with anyone" .
She’ll soon have to start if she’s to maintain her pledge "to ensure that Northern Ireland’s needs are addressed." And that means in practice aligning with one of the multi-national, multi-part groupings within the new parliament...perhaps if she asks nicely, she’ll be allowed to join the new ESWG (Euro-Sceptic Wackos Group) being cobbled together by the UK Conservatives.
But would she feel comfortable amongst the ultra-rightists of the Latvian Fatherland and Freedom Party (2), the homophobes of the Polish Law and Justice Party and the global climate change denier Vaclav Klaus’s Civic Democrat Party?
Probably better not answering that, the much more serious question is that posed by the historian Timothy Garton-Ash (3) in yesterday’s Guardian- what in earth are the Conservatives doing courting the nuttier (and in terms of the Latvians, downright sinister) wing of Euro-Scepticism?
Footnotes:
1. Anyone else notice the DUP Press Office fell into a Time Vortex for almost a week?
Last message on 3/6/2009:
"Dodds criticises Electoral Office blunder...."
The next 2 messages, a full 24 hours after Mrs Dodds stumbled over the finishing line-
9/6/2009:
"Ross meets BGE over Larne gas storage project"
"Action required on college opportunities for older people"
2. Certain members of the Latvia's Fatherland and Freedom Party believe that the Latvian Legion (the Latvian units of the Waffen-SS) were "brave patriots allying with one devil to fend off a worse one, Stalin's Soviet Union".
3. His book "The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central Europe" is the best eye-witness account I’ve read of the transition of Central Europe during the period 1988-1990
6 comments:
How is what David Cameron is doing an issue for Diane Dodds? Surely it is an issue for Jim Nic? He did say he would not be joining any group with such nutters in his Hearts and Minds interview:
"No they won't be right wing fanatics or anything else. Noel I stand in the centre of politics and not going to join the right-wing now"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wv57k6PhkQ&feature=related
It was a rhetorical question- its not the numbers of MEPs he needs to form a grouping but number of parties from 7 different countries he needs. So, I really can't imagine she's top priority for DC at the minute, although looking at it dispassionatey she's (or her party) is the kind of non-toxic EU-sceptic he'd be looking for I guess.
It'll not only Jim Nich that'll have questions to answer, I think a fair proportion of the Conservatives Euro Grouping, which, apart from several exceptions, is more EU-friendly than the grassroots, will be uncomfortable.
I'm no friend of Latvian nationalists as you know, and I'm wary about some of the allegiances necessary to make up this group. On the broader point it's worth remembering that Garton Ash is pathologically federalist. I mean he's a single state enthusiast. So I would take his naysaying with a pinch of salt.
"So I would take his naysaying with a pinch of salt."
He is a federalist and that affects the tone of the piece. But the fact is that the 3 parties so far are the least worst possibilities for this grouping. They have to find 4 more parties from 4 more countries and the strong likelihood is that there are going to be some even murkier individuals and parties approached. Hague's defence (along the lines of "politics is different in E.Europe") wasn't convincing either.
The Civic Democrats are an excellent choice of partner for the Tories being one of the few sensible parties in Europe.
And those of us with some scientific understanding know that Man Made Global Warming is a crock of the proverbial.
I am a professional computer programmer and it is my professional opinion that these ridiculous computer models they claim can accurately measure the temperature in 50 years time are actually full of errors and fail to capture all of the complexity of the environment.
And if you want to disagree, then I have a computer program that will exactly predict the result of the next General Election - it's much simpler than these climate models, there are far fewer variables and far more predictable outcomes. Yours for a very reasonable price, much cheaper than the £100s of billions of "global warming" precautions and the attending arrogant hubristic attempts to control the climate as if were just altering the setting on a thermostat.
Wildgoose
Of the three parties mentioned the Civic Democrats are by far the most... civic. But the climate change question is not Klaus' only "unorthodoxy". main pioint though is where the other 4 parties for the Conservatives are going to come from.
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