Denis MacShane: Fruit Loop

Chris Patten, the arch eurofederalist Tory, has written a book.  And a ridiculous piece of dirge it looks too.

The Labour MP for Rotherham, Denis MacShane, has used his review of the book in the Independent to launch a bizarre attack on the Tories:

Patten was the last Governor of Hong Kong and is almost the last pro-European in the Tory Party. He has warm words for the EU but does not examine the visceral anti-Europeanism of his party and its leader. In Berlin recently, David Cameron promised a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty were he to become prime minister and the Treaty were not to be ratified. That would mean that the first period of any Tory government unleashing, as its main contribution to international politics, a festival of xenophobic hate against Europe. The Tories, BNP, UKIP and the Daily Mail would win the vote – but at the cost of reducing Britain's influence across the Channel and Atlantic to zero.

I told you it was bizarre didn't I?  I mean, for a start Camoron is a rampant eurofederalist, as is the bulk of the leadership of the Tory Party.  You only have to look at the voting records of their MEPs to see the extent to which they have embraced the idea of European integration.  MacShane also seems to be in dire need of a dictionary.  Xenophobia is an irrational fear of foreigners and not, as he seems to believe, the perfectly rational opposition to having your country absorbed into a facist EU superstate.  And does anyone really believe that we have any influence in the EU?  Anyone?  Or that our influence in the US and the wider anglosphere is somehow improved by us cutting our ties with the people we have most in common with in favour of a political union with a group of countries who don't even have the concept of innocent until proven guilty in their legal system?  Give me a break, this man is in cloud cookoo land.

MacShane might be a bit of a fruit loop but Patten gave him the material ...