Macintyre blasts Hannan over Kaminski’s past

by Chris Barnyard
3:33 pm - August 3rd 2009

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Why is he so keen to defend anti-Semites? asks James Macintyre of Tory MEP Daniel Hannan.

The row kicked off when the New Statesman’s political editor wrote in last week’s edition that Jewish leaders had turn on Tories after Cameron made an alliance with Polish MEP Michal Kaminski.

He belongs to Poland’s Law and Justice party, one of whose MPs, Artur Górski, described the election of Barack Obama in the US as “a disaster” and “the end of the civilisation of the white man”. Kaminski is a former member of the neo-Nazi National Revival of Poland party (NOP), which, in a direct quotation from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, says in its manifesto that “Jews will be removed from Poland, and their possessions will be confiscated”. In 2001, he condemned his own president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, for apologising over the Polish massacre of hundreds of Jews in Jedwabne in July 1941.
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Also in Poland, Rafal Pankowski of the Holocaust campaign group Never Again said: “Kaminski has an extreme-right background. To have him, of all people, the chairman of a group that legitimises far-right tendencies across Europe, is somewhat ironic. [Especially] for a leader like Cameron, who domestically opposed the BNP, for example . . . I would call on David Cameron to sever links with Kaminski.”

The only response from the Tory has been from Dan Hannan MEP, who wrote an extended diatribe attacking those making the accusations and defending Kaminski.

He also used Guido to support his own assertion that Macintyre was a “Labour spin doctor”:

Before turning to the substance of the allegations, it’s worth considering who is making them and why. Three pieces have appeared within the past 24 hours, all making a similar point: this one in The Independent by the Labour MP Denis Macshane; this in The Guardian by Tim Garton-Ash; and this in The New Statesman by James Macintyre. None of these authors would pretend to be disinterested. Denis Macshane is a thoroughly likeable sort: one of those rare pro-Europeans who genuinely knows about other countries. He is also, as he would be the first to own, a Euro-zealot, who has a particular bee in his bonnet about the Tories being “xenophobic“. I’ve never met Professor Garton Ash, but I read him every week. He’s plainly a clever and knowledgeable man – he must, for example, know how unfounded are his constant digs about David Cameron’s “Latvian legion”. But he wouldn’t pretend, either, to be impartial about European integration. James Macintyre is the only one of the three who is a journalist, and he is widely recognised as, first and foremost, a Labour spin-doctor: Guido has the full charge-sheet here.

Writing on his blog, Macintyre hits back at Hannan:

I reported on-the-record complaints about this man from various leading Jewish figures across Europe, including the Chief Rabbi of Poland. For this, I am accused of "the most shameful tactic yet", and of being a "first and foremost Labour spin doctor". Quite apart from the fact that Hannan has spent his career posing as a journalist, a leader writer and a columnist while desperately seeking elected office as an official Conservative candidate (while I have never sought office, frequently written critically of Labour and never been a member of a political party), I am amused that his "journalistic" source for this smear is the Tory blogger "Guido Fawkes". Conservative fanatics such as Hannan and "Fawkes" have never forgiven me for reporting President Obama’s verdict on David Cameron: that he is a "lightweight"; a claim which I have had confirmed by a number of officials and which I know to be as true as it is upsetting to some.
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I am sorry that Hannan does not share the verdict of a real journalist on my piece: that of his superior Telegraph colleague George Pitcher, the paper’s highly respected religion editor. Or, say, his former ally in Brussels Edward McMillan-Scott, who told my colleague Daniel Trilling that “I regard [Kaminski] as completely unsuitable for the post of vice-president and also therefore unsuitable as the leader of the new group. It doesn’t take long to find out his past is pretty dodgy”.

Hannan has yet to reply.

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About the author
Chris is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. He is an aspiring journalist and reports stories for LC.
· Other posts by Chris Barnyard

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The Tory showdown in Europe for the continues « Raincoat Optimism
[...] to deny calls of anti-semitism against him despite the best efforts of right-wing Tories such as Dan Hannan who has also been known to stick up for other unpalatable types in Europe, such as the far-right [...]