Europe's Far Left failing to keep step.

A few weeks back I made a moderate amount of hay from Sinn Fein's supporting Gadaffi (to all intents and purposes) via their involvement with the GUE/NGL grouping in the EU Parliament.

In among the GUE/NGL MEPs lurks one Eva-Britt Svensson, flying the red flag for Sweden.  So mark this, found at the ever diverting local.se:   

"The Left party agreed Wednesday to vote through the government proposal that Sweden send fighters to Libya when the Riksdag votes on Friday, but continued to support the Greens' and the Social Democrats' line of restricting Sweden's involvement".

These are Swedish Far Lefters we are talking about, so this is pretty astonishing.


To adapt Basil Hume, [this] could be the conversion of the Far Left, for which we have prayed all these years.  Unlikely, however.

Strange bedfellows....

From the London Assembly site:

"The London Assembly today unanimously passed a motion congratulating Her Majesty the Queen on the impending marriage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton".

And in more precise terms, this:

This Assembly sends a message of loyal greetings to Her Majesty the Queen on the occasion of the marriage of her grandson, HRH Prince William of Wales, to Catherine Middleton on 29 April 2011 and extends its warmest wishes to the happy couple for a long and happy life together. The Assembly additionally sends its best wishes to Her Majesty on the impending marriage of her granddaughter, Miss Zara Phillips. The Assembly instructs the Chair to write to Her Majesty conveying its respect and greetings.”(My emphases)

Having checked the composition of the current assembly, there are '11 Conservative, eight Labour, three Liberal Democrat, two Green Party and one Independent'.  The independent was voted in as a member of the B*P.

A little bit of digging around shows that the Green Party put out a  policy document in 2009 which is distinctly republican:

• The monarchy shall cease to be an office of government. The legislative, executive and judicial roles of the monarch shall cease. 
• Peers and members of the royal family shall have the same civil rights and fiscal obligations as other citizens. 
• A settlement of property held by the current royal family shall be made, to divide it between that required for the private life of current members of the family and that to be public property.

As an unabashed republican, I am not going to feign outrage etc, but I think that Johnson and Jones might have some trouble defending themselves from the charge of hypocrisy.  Unless they send congrats to the mothers of all soon to be marrieds, of course.

The effect of oestrogen on political allegiance...

This from thelocal.de:

"Before undergoing a sex change to become a woman, Monika Strub was a member of Germany's neo-Nazi NPD party. But ten years later, she is running for Baden-Württemberg's state parliament for the socialist party The Left".

The paper euphemises somewhat - Die Linke / The Left party is the successor in title to the German 'Democrtatic' Republics' Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands.  It is part of the GUE/NGL coalition referenced yesterday. 

Meanwhile it does rather make one wonder about some of our home grown extemists and where they might end up if Eves were to become Steves and vice versa.

Delusional, or just an attention seeker?

This, from the Evening Standard:

"Green Party leader Caroline Lucas has positioned herself as "the real opposition" to the coalition Government".

This is the woman who is quite happy to make common cause with Fourth International Trots.