Denis MacShane says that the Conservatives’ refusal to align themselves with other centre-right parties on the Council of Europe has driven them into a shabby alliance with Russia
As Vladimir Putin moves seamlessly from being president to prime minister of Russia, amid mounting worry that Russia is slipping its democratic moorings, there is a group of 21st-century fellow-travellers the Kremlin can count on: the Conservative party. Tory MPs are now toeing the Russian line in the new battlefield for democratic rights located in Strasbourg. Not the European Parliament, where no Russians sit, but the Council of Europe, where Putin loyalists work in close collaboration with Tory MPs to promote the Russian line, including a bid to place Putin’s man as head of promoting democracy and human rights on the Continent.
The Council of Europe was set up after Winston Churchill’s famous 1946 Zurich speech calling for a ‘United States of Europe’.
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