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.
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Denis MacShane is Labour MP for Rotherham and was No 2 at the FCO under Tony Blair. Follow on @denismacshane and www.denismacshane.com
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Photo: Simon Summers
Conservatives, Georgia, Putin, Russia
Source: http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2012/08/22/russias-new-friends/
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