The Company She Keeps

Team Starmer, whose main objection to far-right policies seems to be their lack of fiscal prudence, has come over all moralistic about a far-right politician attending a gathering of far-right politicians. In a re-writing of history worthy of his Dear Leader's fellow purger and centraliser Stalin, the shadow paymaster general even invoked Winston Churchill, who thought Indians were beastly and liked to snigger about Hottentots getting the vote. The shadow paymaster general, whose front-bench colleagues write for the Sun and Mail, has called upon Fishy Rishi to prevent one of his erstwhile Home Secretaries rubbing shoulders with the likes of Viktor Orbán. Despite his open racism and authoritarianism, the Hungarian prime minister has rather sullied the Britishness of his values by supporting the wrong side in the Ukraine war. Another luminary, Hans-Georg Maaßen, has compared migrants with cancer; while one Rod Dreher has diagnosed white-genocide paranoia by the eminently Blairite phrase "legitimate, realistic concerns." Given that such pronouncements have been standard Home Office discourse for at least a decade and a half, it hardly seems that any of these worthies, let alone their fellow-travellers among the master race, has much legitimacy to gain from hob-nobbing with Suella Braverman.