Here is a photo of something really disgusting at Silvio Berlusconi’s luxury villa.
Italy is agog with the publication by El Pais in Spain of pictures of naked people during romps at Berlusconi’s villa. Personally, I find war criminals (and that is a photo of Blair on holiday in the villa) much more disgusting than naked girls. I think you would have to be pretty nuts not to realise that Berlusconi is living a dream playboy fantasy, but I don’t regard that aspect of Berlusconi as hugely harmful, except for the fact that he has been abusing state resources to subsidise it.
What is appalling is the man’s racism. He says things as Italian Prime Minister that even the BNP do not say in public. I watched him this morning on EuroNews making a European Election campaign speech. He said:
“How do I feel when I see all these non-Italians walking around Milan? When I look around Milan, I think I am in Africa!”
this kind of inflammatory racism is unacceptable from a European Union head of government, and if the EU cannot find some means of sanctioning such behaviour, then it is not an institution which brings the civilising benefits which its proponents claim.
Turnout at the EU elections has been abysmal throughout Europe, with 12% voting in Slovenia. Given that the European Parliament has – and this is a good thing – steadily increased its powers vis a vis the Commission and Council, particularly through co-decision and co-initiation, the lack of interest is alarming.
So too is the xenophobic turn of European politics. Sarkozy today effectively said “No” to Obama’s lobbying for Turkey to join the EU. Berlusconi’s racist rhetoric would not be unusual in many EU states, among parties who are going to win their national EU elections.
Still more alarming, even Berlusconi is not right wing enough for David Cameron’s Tories and they have allied themselves with some truly horrible nationalist parties from Eastern Europe.
I was First Secretary at the British Embassy in Warsaw heading the Embassy’s political and economic sections. I speak Polish. I can tell you definitively that the Kaczynski’s Law and Justice Party – the British Conservative’s now main ally in the EU parliament – consists of a large number of anti-semitic and ultra-conservative Catholic crazies of the worst kind. I actually know these people, and they are miles to the right of the BNP.
Kaczynski continually condemns anti-semitism in public. You might ask yourself why he has to do that. One prominent member of his party (and of ther Sejm) once walked out of a lunch with me in Warsaw where a girl from the Adenauer Foundation was also present, because she was Jewish. I have heard casual anti-semitism from components of Law and Justice which you would not believe.
I cannot believe the Tories are not aware of this. Chris Patten, Ken Clarke and others have been ridiculed by Tory toadies like Iain Dale for warning strongly against the Conservatives’ new European Alliance. What does it tell you about Cameron’s Tories that they do not care?