Distinguished Dhimmi : Michael Cashman

In the recent EU Parliament debate on the "2010 Progress Report on Turkey", I thought the most repulsive contribution was from the Labour MEP for the West Midlands, Michael Cashman. Watching his speech, it is very easy to imagine this man as the member of some Soviet-style Duma rather than a democratic parliament. There is no attempt at serious substantiation of his point of view; he simply declaims it defiantly, his bellicose tone implying that any dissenters would be immediately classified as evil and sent off to re-education camps or firing squads had he the power to make it happen.

"I am proud to stand up and welcome the progress made by Turkey in its accession to the EU. I have long been a supporter of Turkish accession. It is in the EU’s interest and indeed it is in Turkey’s. We can take a narrow, populist view or we can show leadership and vision. That leadership and vision is to bring Turkey into the EU, where it belongs."

These words - uttered in the crude, belligerent tone of an old trade union bruiser or communist cadre - crackle with contempt for the ordinary people he nominally represents. His constituency, the West Midlands, used to be the beating industrial heart of England but now bears greater resemblance to a third world cesspit.

Like the Communist nomenklatura of old, Cashman manages to combine a sense of moral superiority with up-to-the-neck levels of personal corruption. The press revealed a few years ago that he routinely pays his gay lover £30,000 per year from EU taxpayer funds, supposedly for administrative services even though his partner is also the director of a busy PR firm.