Is this the man who is about to wreck David Cameron's vision of a new right of centre grouping in the European Parliament? He's Mirek Topolanek, the leader of the Czech ODS Party, the country's Prime Minister and the incoming EU President. A couple of days ago he was re-elected as his party's leader at their conference. But more significantly the party's previous opposition to ratifying the Lisbon Treaty was shelved during the conference. This resulted in the country's President Vaclav Klaus announcing he would be resigning his party membership, taking with him several other leading lights in the ODS. They are now going to form a new right wing party, under the Libertas banner, which will fight next year's Euro elections.
Why should this matter to David Cameron? Because it means that Topolanek may well rat on Klaus's previous commitment to leave the EPP and join up with the Tories in a new European Parliamentary grouping. No decisions have been made, but expect the EPP leadership to do everything it can in advance of June to woo Topolanek away from Cameron's charms.
The fact that Cameron is still messing about with these lightweights is depressing. With a solid centre-right government in Germany saying many of the things Cameron/Osborne are saying, when the heck are the Tories going to stop playing games and engage with the grown up world?
ReplyDeleteCameron should step back from this political crap. In the real world who gives a shit which group is aligned with which in the EU Parliament? EU MPs should vote in line with their own party whips - and that's it. End of.
ReplyDeletehave i been asleep and missed something, when windmill dave said 'all tory mep's will leave the present grouping to join a new group more aligned to mainstream uk tory thinking' the tory mep's gave him metaphorically (and possibly literally) two fingers. something to do with missing out on expenses and foreign trips or some other equally principled reason.
ReplyDeleteThe sooner we're out the better...
ReplyDeleteIain
ReplyDeleteLets have a comment from you on the appalling bullying of Sark by the egregious Barclay brothers please!
Gosh, are the Tories still messing about with this? I assumed they had moved out of the EPP years back. Does not say much for Cameron's international influence that he is not able to sort out leaving a grouping in the EU Parl within a short period.
ReplyDeleteRat is bit harsh. Perhaps Klaus didn't really mean it but just promised to leave the EPP to shut his right wingers up? It has been known.
ReplyDeleteI feel this will push UKIP out of the water once and for all. Libertas will soon die out like UKIP did. Gained momentum and now died out and clinging to the BNP as part of a last ditch attempt.
ReplyDeleteTom Hagen, I think you may have called it wrong on Libertas and UKIP. The 2nd Irish referendum gives them fresh reason to appeal to people totally fed up with the EUSSR. Libertas will galvanise Irish voters and many of us who won't vote for UKIP normally are voting for them next June. And UKIP has nothing to do with BNP, which has tried to unsuccessfully infiltrate it from time to time.
ReplyDeleteTo summarise this piece:
ReplyDelete1/ Even here in Tory la-la land, where Eurotosh Paranoia has been raised to an art form, very few people are actually interested. A paltry 9 Comments so far.
2/ Cameron is hopelessly floundering and has no idea how to run a policy towards Europe.
3/ Nobody else in Europe gives a stuff what Cameron thinks or does now.
4/ Er, that's it.