Lenin called them ‘useless fools’. They were the gullible idiots of the left who supported Sovietism even after it descended into terror and the crushing of freedom.
Now Vladimir Putin has his own groupies in British politics but this time they are rightwing Tory MPs.
Last night at the Russian embassy under the benevolent eye of Putin’s agents in London the Conservative Friends of Russia was launched.
On its website are links to official Putin propaganda outlets defending the trial and prison sentence imposed on the Pussy Riot punk singers.
Sir Malcom Rifkind the former Tory foreign secretary, forever linked with Britain’s craven Balkans policy and the shame of Srebrenica, is honorary president.
As with William Hague’s shambolic handling of the Julian Assange asylum case, the launch of a pro-Putin Tory group at a time of growing disquiet over Russia’s abuse of human rights is a major foreign policy error of judgement
There is a functioning all-party parliamentary group on Russia but this bizarre effort to create a Tory pro-Putin group shows the kind of tin ear Tory foreign policy supremos have. Hague condemns Syria but is silent on Bahrain. He is tough on Burma, quiescent on China. British public opinion is outraged at the sentences at the Pussy Riot trial. The FCO continues to refuse to implement the terms of a House of Commons resolution on Sergei Magnitsky which was initiated by Tory MPs including Dominic Raab.
In 2008 Cameron said Tory MPs would quit the Russian group where they sit at the Council of Europe in protest at Putin’s invasion of Georgia which Putin has now admitted was planned two years previously. This has not happened. Tory MPs still sit with Putin stooges at the Council of Europe. Cameron refuses to raise publicly with Putin major human rights violations.
Friendship groups with Russia used to be a speciality of the left in the days of Stalinism. Now we have Putinism it is the Tory party that is creating a pro-Russian group of fellow travellers. It reflects the shambolic incoherence of Tory networking in Europe and across the world.
Hard questions need to be asked about who finances and controls this group. Cameron would be well advised to disband it before it gets wider world attention. As in the US and Europe there is growing concern over the neo-authoritarianism of Putin. There is a lavish all-expenses-paid junket to Russia for Tory MPs planned for next month. Cameron should cancel it.
But for most Tories Putin is preferable to European centre-right parties. This bizarre episode in Tory party history is part of the desperate hunt by today’s Conservatives for links with any one, anywhere as long as it is not the European Union.
—————————————————————————————
Denis MacShane is Labour MP for Rotherham and was No 2 at the FCO under Tony Blair. Follow on @denismacshane and www.denismacshane.com
—————————————————————————————
Let’s be clear, all the parties have their ‘Friends of…..etc’ groups, why should the Tories not have one for Russia? Why is a Russia group any worse than the Labour Friends of Israel, Labour Friends of India, or Conservative Friends of Pakistan?
These groups are designed to foster dialogue and understanding – never has this been more important between Russia and Europe.
I think it is a shame, that Denis, once an excellent Europe Minister, has reduced himself to mudslinging on such an important issue. Very disappointed.
I also think Lenin used the term, ‘useful idiots’, rather than ‘useless fools’. Where is your quote from?
I also think Lenin used the term, ‘useful idiots’, rather than ‘useless fools’. Where is your quote from?
There is no evidence in this article to support the claim that the group is pro-Putin. This is just a rant, plain and simple.
I’ve never realised quite how insane you were until today.
From the Conservative Friends of Russia website link to A Short Guide to the Russian Political System:
“The Russian political system is one of the more recent to embrace democracy but remains deeply flawed in terms of its democratic credentials, overwhemingly tainted by corruption, and massively influenced by the power and personality of one man, Vladimir Putin.”
Not quite the “bizarre effort to create a pro-Putin Tory group” of MacShane’s imagination.
The
Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which was defiled by grown women who
somehow expect to be taken seriously despite calling themselves “an
anarchist punk rock collective” by the name of “Pussy Riot”, was
previously demolished on the orders of Stalin in order to make way for a
swimming pool. Its restoration embodies the restoration of Holy
Russia, pre-eminent among the Slavs in their age-old mission of
defending the true Western civilisation that is the recapitulation in
Jesus Christ and His Church of all three of the Old Israel, Hellenism
and the Roman Empire, at least as much against the godless, rootless,
usury-based, stupefied, promiscuous pseudo-West as against anything
else.
That pseudo-West would seem to be summed up perfectly by
this “Pussy Riot”. Or are they demonstrating against the reversal of
Stalinism? If so, then they are in line with the only viable political
alternative to Putin and Medvedev, which is the totally unreconstructed Communist
Party of the Russian Federation, notable for its Soviet flags at
demonstrations. Banners on which British reporters cannot bring
themselves to comment, any more than on the equally ubiquitous black,
yellow and white of Russian ultranationalism in all its anti-modern,
anti-urban, anti-scientific and anti-Semitic awfulness. Russian
ultranationalism in opposition to the present Russian Government. Have you got that? Has Nick Cohen? If
it is not those, then it is the Caucasian Islamists. Or else the
National Bolsheviks, whose flag is that of Nazi Germany, but with a
black hammer and sickle in place of the swastika.
Is Denis MacShane a totally unreconstructed
supporter of, in that case, a necessarily reconstructed Soviet Union? Is
he an anti-modern,
anti-urban, anti-scientific and anti-Semitic Russian ultranationalist?
Is he a Caucasian Islamist? Is he a National Bolshevik? Or is he just a
supporter of godlessness, rootlessness, usury, stupefaction and
promiscuity, who inhabits so very limited a circle that he imagines
everyone to be like that, and who is therefore shocked to the core to
discover that some people are not? If the last, then he is well past his
sell by date, and really has been ever since the invasion of Iraq.