Fellow Travellers on Wrong Course

Hillary Clinton apparently expressed her concern about the Tories' European allies this week

British Conservative William Hague’s statements in Washington were given with an air of confidence. The American administration had been assured that the Conservative Party’s allies in Europe are “mainstream centre right”.

That is not how many in Poland regard the Polish Law and Justice Party with whom the Conservatives now sit in the European Parliament. Scum is not a nice word and it is saddening to hear it used as a term of abuse towards elected representatives.

Such remarks are unworthy of political opponents. Scum they are not. But mainstream centre right they are also most certainly not, and to suggest so is to insult American intelligence. It should be remembered that the US has a great deal of intelligence regarding Polish matters.

Should British Conservative leader David Cameron become Prime Minister he would find himself and his government cold-shouldered in Europe on account of his party’s allies, recruited by small group of British Conservative MEPs with right wing tendencies.

The so-called special relationship between Britain and America is firmly on its way out. That Britain, under any other leader, would find itself dealing with the US through Brussels is a given. Chancellor Angela Merkel has been building on what the Germans have for many years seen as their own Transatlantic Bridge.

If Conservative attitudes to Europe continue on their present path their future government would be faced with a Franco-German led European Bridge to Washington and they won’t have a foot on it.

This is the clear and unpalatable truth that confronted William Hague in his discussions with Hilary Clinton. The message from America is clear: unless a future Conservative government is “at the heart of Europe” it will be out in the cold.

The US is careful to say that it is not interfering in the internal politics of the UK. The truth is that Cameron and his party are pariahs in Brussels and Europe since their decision to quit the German dominated Christian Democrat European Peoples Party in the European Parliament.

William Hague’s extraordinary decision to expel Conservative Edward McMillan-Scott has shocked leading political figures. The influential EPP would welcome him but the Yorkshire MEP is staunchly Conservative, although now sitting as an independent.

German MEPs are unequivocal when they say that David Cameron will not be welcome, should he become Prime Minister, at the all-important pre-summit meetings at which key deals are struck between centre right parties across Europe unless he changes his attitude to Europe.

A further ironic twist for the embattled Conservative leadership came in the form of the two-to-one victory by Edward McMillan-Scott at Tuesday’s Oxford Union debate on the future of the EU.

That Daniel Hannan the rightist Conservative MEP and admitted eurosceptic with close links to his party’s leadership, originally scheduled to oppose the motion, ducked the debate in favour of Westminster eurosceptic Bill Cash is especially telling. He is widely regarded as a United Kingdom Independence Party figure travelling under false colours.

McMillan-Scott first had his Conservative Party whip withdrawn and then became a ‘cause celebre’ by being thrown out of the party altogether, on the orders of Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague, for standing against his parliamentary group’s nomination for Vice President the Polish MEP Michal Kaminski.

In the debate McMillan-Scott said: "One consequence of the Euro-sceptics like Dan Hannan and Bill Cash persuading Cameron to join the extreme fringes of European politics is plain: in Paris and Berlin there is new energy behind Franco-German cooperation - partly because Merkel and Sarkozy feel that Cameron is semi-detached. The Conservative Party's progressive disengagement from the EU is also aggravating the US administration. Washington wants an incoming government to play a central role in European policy making."

He said he was provoked into standing against Polish MEP Michal Kaminski - who now leads the Conservatives in Europe - for the vice-presidency of the European Parliament "because Kaminski has had recent extremist links." He explained to the Oxford Union that he had appealed against the Conservative Party's expulsion, and that he hoped for a Conservative government.

Kaminski was, under the Conservative Party leaderships scheme of things, to have been “rewarded” with the post while Czech ODS objections to sitting with the Poles was to have been mollified by the appointment of British Conservative Timothy Kirkhope as leader of the new European Conservative and Reformist Group.

William Hague is said to have expelled McMillan-Scott for defying an instruction not to stand against Kaminski. This, notwithstanding Article 2 of the European Parliament Members’ Statute that expressly forbids MEPs from complying with any such instruction.

Polish political enemies of Kaminski and his party are now busily feeding the media with a veritable diatribe of provable examples of extreme right views and actions that go much further than simple anti-Semitism – and are more recent than the Conservative Party care to admit.

It is telling that only six of Kaminski’s Polish MEPs voted for him in the contest against McMillan-Scott.

Perhaps there will be more bad news for the Conservative leadership: rumours abound that the band of right wing British Conservatives that engineered the departure from the EPP to a new eurosceptic group are trying to replace Kaminski with right-winger Geoffrey Van Orden. Should that happen a number of pro-Europe Conservatives are threatening to take-off back to the EPP.