Let's Have a Heated Debate

Unenlightened Commentary has a go at Denis McShane over his response in the Guardian to the Euro election results (Ten lessons for the left from Europe).

McShane makes a plea to readers to "leave to one side the abuse that any article by a politician provokes and instead help in saying which points are pertinent and which are irrelevant to the next stage of debate." Too late.

Here's my own pint of bile:

- "In the European parliament election there is really only one central question – the EU itself." How true. What a pity the EU is never discussed and never has been discussed by Labour or anyone else in the last twelve years.

- (3) "The manifesto of the centre-right EPP federation explicitly referred to Europe as a Judeo-Christian concept. No room for Muslims then." You're a cretin, McShane. Europe is a Judeo-Christian concept. Go read some fucking history books. Read some bloody literature, you know, the kind of stuff that's no longer taught in our schools as a result of your policies. People from other faiths are welcome provided they accept the foundation of our culture.

- (4) "We need a cordon sanitaire around these people who now have access to the European parliament's funds which Nigel Farage reckons has given him £2m plus as an MEP." UKIP, like it or not, is a legal, democratic party and its MEPs are entitled to the same expenses as Labour and the others. This is also a despicable misreading of Farage, because, as you well know, that £2m was spread over ten years. Go wash the ordure out of your own stables before you start pointing at others.

- (5) "But the left does well when there is growth, businesses are being created, which in turn create jobs, and citizens have money left to spend themselves rather than see it being transferred to state bureaucracies." Any ruling party does well when there is growth. The Jolly Pirate and Parrot Party would do well in times of plenty.

- (7) "In Britain, the Scottish question will soon become acute. While England and Wales vote Tory, Scotland responds to the European question by becoming more and more nationalist. Labour needs to produce a policy for England before it is too late." In Britain the English question will soon become acute, sunshine. Perhaps you shouldn't have swallowed the EU's traitorous edicts so eagerly and gone ahead with the regionalisation of the United Kingdon, leaving England unrepresented, disparaged and unconsulted. You have fissured the Union and it's the English who are going to get nationalistic.

- (9) "Labour has to take deep breaths and reduce its fever. A leadership putsch now followed by an unavoidable election, however much demanded by Daniel Hannan, Farage, and assorted rightwing columnists, would undermine the progressive cause in Britain for generations." How about an election demanded by the people, perhaps? Bet you never thought of that, did you? And there's that tell-tale toxic word - 'progressive', here a euphemism for that long-buried word 'socialism', except with authoritarian overtones.

- (10) David Cameron is having to create "an alliance with homophobic Polish rightists or a Czech party which has just lost power and whose leader thinks global warming is a myth." They sound as bad as the nuts you could assemble from the cupboards of the previous bunch. As for loons, aren't we governed by a petulant autocrat who believes that a non-existent man claiming to be the son of a (non-existent) god was crucified two thousand years ago and came back to life again? And is now personally guiding his moral compass?