Labour’s unsavoury Euro friends

"Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" asks St Matthew. A very good question for our foreign secretary David Miliband. He has been busy denouncing the British Conservatives for forming an alliance in the European parliament with Latvian, Czech, Polish and other Euro MPs who share the Tories' sceptical outlook rather more than their erstwhile Christian Democrat allies.

Miliband claims that the new allies from the east have some unsavoury extremist connections. The accusation against the Latvian Fatherland and Freedom party, that they "celebrate Waffen SS veterans", has rather run out of steam. They attend an annual commemoration of all Latvia's war victims, an official remembrance day attended by every non-Russian political party in Latvia.

Rather more effort has gone into denouncing Michal Kaminski, the Polish MEP from the Law and Justice party who is leader of the new group. There has been some effort to brand him homophobic. This is because he used the term pedaly, a slang term for homosexuals that is, or at any rate was when he used it in 2000, in common usage including among Polish politicians. There is some dispute over whether it is equivalent to saying "fags" or "queers" or something rather less derogatory, but Kaminiski has agreed not to use the term in future as he does not wish to give offence. By the way, I used to sometimes use the term "Polacks", under the impression it was equivalent to "Aussies" or "Kiwis". When I was gently told that Polack was an offensive term I stopped using it. Kaminski says he is proud that Poland was the first European country to decriminalise homosexuality, in 1928, that he has gay friends and that he has "nothing against" civil partnerships.

But the main thrust has been to accuse him of antisemitism. This has been based on two pieces of evidence. First, that he opposed an apology on behalf of the Polish people for the massacre of Jews by Poles as well as Germans which took place at Jedwabne. But this opposition was based on his view that those individuals involved in the massacre were guilty, rather than it being a matter of collective guilt. He regards the massacre as shameful.

Second, when Kaminski was 14 years old, a time when there was no open opposition, he joined the first anti-communist group he came across, the National Revival of Poland (NOP). This subsequently became an antisemitic party, but he had left by the age of 17. So this involvement doesn't even prove that was an antisemitic teenager, let alone that he is antisemitic now.

Still, it would have been better if Kaminski hadn't joined NOP, if he hadn't used the word pedaly. These were misjudgments. But what about the beam in Miliband's eye? A look at the lineup of MEPs in the socialist group of the European parliament shows that they are mad, bad and dangerous to know. There's Romania's Social Democratic party, whose members include Radu Mazare, the mayor of Constanta, who dressed up as a Nazi at a fashion show, and was strongly criticised by Jewish groups as a result. From Ireland we have in the socialist group (having defected from the communist group) Proinsias De Rossa (born Francis Ross), a former member of the IRA. He says he "can't remember" whether or not he wrote to the Soviets asking for money. He'll forget his own name next.

Then, since the Labour party is so interested in Polish MEPs, it might care to explain why, in December 2004, it welcomed into its ranks two MEPs from the Self Defence of the Republic party, Bogdan Golik and Wieslaw Kuc, although Kuc left, leaving Golik behind. This party is led by Andrzej Lepper, recipient of two honorary degrees from the antisemitic Interregional Academy of Personnel Management – an outfit that counts the American white supremacist David Duke as an honorary professor. Lepper has multiple convictions for assault and his party anthem once featured the line "this land is your land, this land is my land [and] we won't let anyone punch us in the face".

Before June, also sitting in the socialist group was a former communist Italian MEP called Giulietto Chiesa, whose main concern was promoting his 9/11 conspiracy theory that it was all a put-up job by the Americans. Thankfully, the Polish Self Defence party was wiped out in the European elections and Chiesa, who went to stand in Latvia, also lost his seat. This is to the credit of the Polish and Latvian electorates – but no thanks to the Socialist MEPs, who were happy to shelter them in their ranks.

Nor do they show much sign of having changed. They continue to sit alongside the Slovak Social Democrats (SMER), who share power with the neo-Nazi Slovak National party, which is open in its admiration for Jozef Tiso, the wartime ruler of fascist Slovakia. It is as if Labour councillors had entered a coalition with the BNP.

What of the Bulgarian Socialist party, who Labour MEPs also snuggle up to? Its leader, Sergei Stanishev, condemned Bulgaria's first gay pride march, declaring his disapproval of "the manifestations and demonstrations of such orientations". Many of the eastern European parties have their roots in the communist dictatorships of the old Warsaw Pact. The Hungarian Socialist party, the successor to the Hungarian communists, is led by Ferenc Gyurcsány. He was chief of staff for his predecessor Péter Medgyessy, who was once a communist counterespionage officer under the code name D-209.

There is nothing particularly new about the European parliament being stuffed with weirdos. It's not just the socialists, of course. The Christian Democrat grouping, the EPP, that the Tories have ditched, include Mussolini's heirs in the National Alliance – now absorbed into Berlusconi's People of Freedom party. The Lib Dems have got some oddballs in their group. What all this mudslinging at the Tories comes down to is that the European establishment dislike the prospect of a mainstream, respectable Eurosceptic grouping emerging. The double standards involved in making the attacks are quite staggering.