Idiocy On High… September 28, 2008
Posted by bensix in Uncategorized.trackback
Among Labour’s attempts to ‘take the fight to the Tories’, one of the most prominent figures has been the regular commentator and fanatical Blairite Dennis MacShane. His latest column appears to suggest that the British should vote Labour so as to protect themselves from their own hateful xenophobia:
“In Berlin recently, David Cameron promised a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty were he to become prime minister and the Treaty were not to be ratified. That would mean that the first period of any Tory government unleashing, as its main contribution to international politics, a festival of xenophobic hate against Europe.”
So, should we acquiesce to such patronising rhetoric? Is the threat of the Conservatives so urgent that we should throw up the Labourite barricades? Well, let’s look at MacShane’s record and see if he’s any more supportable than a Tory.
MacShane is notable as an enthusiastic internationalist. After the Venezuala coup, he wrote that Hugo Chavez had often been a “ranting populist demagogue” and appealed for a “swift return to a legitimate, democratic government in Venezuela“. Two days later, Chavez was reinstated.
In 2003, at a Commons debate, he declared that he was “proud to be a member of a Government who have vanquished tyranny“. Three years later, he could only blame the “catalogue of errors the Americans made” for the failure of the invasion, as well as his “anti-American and anti-western” colleagues. If he was proud of the vanquishing, didn’t he have a part to play in the resultant catastrophe?
Nevertheless, he’s still standing on a soapbox and sounding in the apocalypse. Recently, he has been beating the drum for a confrontation with Russia:
“Alas, [the South Ossetia conflict] is only the beginning, and Britain cannot betray Poland and its fellow EU and Nato allies as Chamberlain did in the 1930s.”
It surely isn’t coincidence that four days before that article was published, the Henry Jackson Society – of which MacShane is a member – released a report entitled “Czechoslovakia 1938 – Georgia 2008?”.
MacShane has also been prominent in his opposition to ‘radical Islam‘. In the wake of the Istanbul bombings, he saw fit to tell Constituents that it was…
“…time for the elected and community leaders of British Muslims to make a choice: the British way, based on political dialogue and non-violent protests, or the way of the terrorists against which the whole democratic world is uniting.”
That isn’t only Islamaphobic, it’s rather more Little England than your average eurosceptic.
So, if MacShane has been so wrong, and is still wrong, why should we entertain his warnings of a grim Conservative future (psst: the answer is that we shouldn’t)?
I had several correspondences with Mr MacShane over the EU a while back.
After that I gave up. I don’t know why any news outlet would pay him for articles. Or perhaps they know it will always draw letters (like this and others).
Of course, if the democratic EU he keeps telling us about have their way, letters and web site like this one and mine will no longer be allowed.
Yeah, it takes a special kind of person to say “You’re racists. Vote for me!” I suppose that outlets will accept that if it provokes a reaction.
Ben
You can more or less predict what MacShane is going to say:-
“People who have doubts about the EU are xenophobic”
“People who question Israel’s policies are anti-semitic”
“People who oppose invading Iraq are anti-American and anti-western”
He writes more or less the same article, or makes the same comment, every time. As well as being repetitive, it adds nothing to the debate. I would have though that the press would have stopped commissioning stuff from him and that the Labour Party would have told him to shut up.
I know, at least one could have an argument with Mikey. It’s possible that very few MPs are willing to comment regularly, and so they take what they can get.
No less tedious, though. And faintly worrying that such people have such great power.
Ben
Indeed, we should worry. MacShane never has much to say about foreign policy issues except to try to snuff out the debate by saying that it would be xenophobic or anti-American or anti-semitic to even have a debate. Yet he is on the Board at Chatham House, he is apparently taken seriously by his colleagues and he gets published regularly in various newspapers.
Dear God, so he is, and he’s credited with writing “regularly for British and European papers on foreign affairs” as well.
Is it that easy to gain power?
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