Is Labour missing the point?

Labour has just published a leaflet attacking the Tories. No surprise there, then.  They concentrate on our allies in the European parliament, and on comments made by our MEPs, including, I have to say, myself.

The attack on our allies is merely a re-hash of all the nonsense that the Guardian, and the (mis-named) Independent, have been flogging for months.  They accuse our Conservative Group Leader, Polish MEP Michal Tomasz Kaminski, of “homophobia”, anti-Semitism, and links to far-right organisations, and they quote renegade former Conservative MEP Edward McMillan Scott also attacking Kaminski.

When it comes to their attacks on Conservative MEPs, though, I wonder if they have misjudged the public mood.  Certainly my good colleague Martin Callanan (North East) is very happy with his quote: “The European Social Model is outdated; it is destructive, it prevents job creation and it acts against entrepreneurship”.  Bang on the money, I’d say.

And I’m pretty happy with my quote, which happens to be the largest, set like a banner across the middle of the page: “Climate hysteria is increasingly remote from reality”. Maybe Labour didn’t read the Times report of November 14th, on the paper’s Populus poll, which showed that among the public as a whole only 41% accept that climate change is man-made.  That figure was slightly higher amongst Labour voters, at 45%.  But that still leaves over half of Labour voters sceptical of man-made global warming.

And since November, as the CRU and IPCC leaks and scandals have emerged, new polls show public confidence in the Great Carbon Myth in rapid decline.  It could well be that two thirds of Labour voters are now sceptical.  Certainly the public is bored with being beaten up and blamed over climate change, and they are hugely reluctant to pay green taxes to salve the tender consciences of the Warmists.

So thanks, Labour, for that leaflet.  Thanks for the for the name-check.  Thanks for the prominent featuring of my quote.  But thanks most of all for showing that I seem to be better aligned with Labour voters on this issue than the Labour Party is.

And Michal Tomasz Kaminski?  Anti-Semitic?  A few weeks ago he was welcomed to Tel Aviv by the Israeli government, lionised by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and featured on their web-site.  I don’t think they’d do that for an anti-Semite.  And linked to far-right organisations?  No.  Kaminski is proud to recall that during the Second World War, his two grandfathers were fighting the Nazis.  At the same time, in England, Edward McMillan Scott’s grandparents were interned as a potential security risk.  They were prominent members of the British Union of Fascists.