Foreign secretary David Miliband today accuses the Tories of putting Britain's relations with the world's leading powers at serious risk by allying the Conservative party to far-right European politicians with neo-Nazi and antisemitic links.
Writing in today's Observer, Miliband expresses astonishment that William Hague, his Conservative opposite number, can describe as a "good friend" a Polish politician who reiterated last week his opposition to an unconditional apology by his countrymen for the massacre in 1941 of at least 300 Polish Jews.
In a blistering attack that takes the row over the Tories' rightwing partners in Europe to new levels, Miliband warns there will be serious repercussions for Britain's reputation abroad if the Conservatives were to win power while allied to such far-right parties.
"There will be incredulity in Washington, Beijing and Delhi, never mind Berlin and Paris, that a party aspiring to government in Britain – the party of Winston Churchill, no less – chooses allies like this," he says.
Today Miliband will meet Hillary Clinton on her first solo visit to London since becoming US secretary of state. The foreign secretary, who is from a Polish Jewish family, demands that Cameron suspend his party's membership of the new European Conservatives and Reformists group (ECR) in which the 25 Tory MEPs sit in the European parliament, alongside controversial Polish, Latvian and Lithuanian partners.
Miliband launched his latest criticism after reading comments by the ECR group's chairman, the Polish MEP Michal Kaminski, in which he suggested in an interview with the Jewish Chronicle that the murder of hundreds of Jews in Jedwabne by their countrymen should be considered a lesser crime than atrocities by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
"I think that it's unfair comparing it [the Jedwabne massacre] with Nazi crimes and putting it with the same level as the Nazi policy," Kaminski told the paper, adding that he opposed a national apology for the Jedwabne massacre unless Jews apologised for what he said were their crimes during the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland.
Last week's Tory party conference was overshadowed by arguments over Kaminski's attendance, and that of another member of the ECR group, Latvian Roberts Zile of the For Fatherland and Freedom party – some of whose members support commemorations of the Latvian Waffen SS. Their alliance with the Conservatives is causing increasing unease at senior levels of the Jewish community.
Miliband told the Observer he was deeply shocked and "astounded" by Kaminski's comments and by a letter sent recently by Hague to expelled Tory MEP Edward McMillan-Scott, in which he described Kaminski as "a good friend of the Conservative party". Hague also insisted that all the allegations that Kaminski had antisemitic leanings had been "proven untrue".
Miliband, whose mother is a Polish Jew from a family that lost 80 members in the Holocaust, said: "There isn't room for hair-splitting when it comes to the Jedwabne massacre. Nor when it comes to understanding what is at stake in framing our international alliances."
Last night there were signs that links with Europe's right were hitting the Tories' standing with voters. Support for Cameron's party has plummeted among the gay community, according to a new poll. A survey by PinkNews.co.uk found that only 22% of respondents would vote Tory if there was a general election tomorrow compared to 39% in June. Most of the voters who deserted the Conservatives moved over to Labour, the poll of 600 subscribers found.
The Observer has established that senior members of Kaminski's Law and Justice party have made openly homophobic comments including comparing homosexuality to a disease and bestiality. Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, the former Law and Justice prime minister, was reported in 2005 as saying that homosexuality was "unnatural" and believed that if a person "tries to infect others with their homosexuality, then the state must intervene in this violation of freedom". A year later, he added that he "did not want homosexuals to teach in public schools" and that he "would not want a gay cabinet member in your government".
Mark Francois, the Conservatives' spokesman for Europe, said last night: "People of goodwill in Poland took different views of the then president's apology for the Jedwabne atrocity. Some, like Michal Kaminski, did not agree with it. Others did.
"Michal Kaminski has always said that what happened at Jedwabne was a terrible crime. He has been defended by the editor of the Jewish Chronicle. He is not an antisemite, as his record of combating antisemitism in Poland shows. After the Latvian government had formally complained that David Miliband's remarks about them were unacceptable and misleading, we had thought the foreign secretary would have learned not to insult political leaders from EU and Nato allies for purely partisan purposes."
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