Denis returns to the charge in a comment on my previous posting:

I think Charles gives the game away when he says he will vote Conservative. I campaign against Islamist bigotry and regularly criticise Iran and other oppressive majority Muslim nations in the House of Commons. But the notion that because the UK as a state has properly friendly relations with Poland its politicians cannot be criticised takes diplomatic omerta to new heights.

I would urge him, Iain Dale and others who have defended the populist rightwing allies of David Cameron to read the new book "The Populist Radical Right in Poland (Extremism and Democracy)" by Rafal Pankowski, an Eton and Oxford educated Pole. It was published by Routledge in February.

Or he could glance at the current Economist dissection of Conservative policy on Europe or read Gideon Rachman in yesterday’s FT saying that a Cameron government would "point to isolationism." I can think why someone like Charles might vote Conservative but on foreign policy surely even he might admit that the Conservatives are weak.

And by the way does he agree with the Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Grayling, that gays can be banned from bed and breakfast small hotels in Britain

As for the last utterly irrelevant point, we seem to live in a strange country where it is OK to ban children but not gays.

If a devout Muslim or Christian bed-and-breakfast owner wants to offer space only to some sorts of people (eg believers) but not others, so what? Likewise if a gay bed-and-breakfast owner wants to make his place a gays-only B&B, so what? And if any owner wants to allow smoking on his property, so what?

The fact is that our laws on what is public and private and why and when are a complete mess. All our political parties are loath to have a principled debate about Freedom, something we all agree has been grossly reduced under Labour. Let’s try getting back towards it?

Anyway. Conservative v Labour on foreign policy.

Denis suggests that I read a book about the Populist Radical Right in Poland by one Rafal Pankowski (Eton and Oxford!). At least some Etonians are held in high esteem by Labour.

Alas, that is a bit too elitist, even for me. It costs (guess) … £76 on Amazon! Maybe MPs get such books on allowances. I’ll wait for the Oxfam shop version to appear.

I previously have written about the difficulties (for us) of classifying politics in Poland.

On most economic issues President Kaczynski has obvious ‘Left’ collectivist/etatist instincts (suspicious of privatisation, strong on state control of key sectors, supportive of trade unions and so on). On others (private morality, patriotism) he is what we in the UK tend to see as socially ‘Right’.

As for populist movements in Poland, when I was there they were basically Red-Brown by instinct, ie high on Polish exclusivity + ill-disguised hostility to other nations/races, + high on state control. In other words, classic central European post-modern lumpen national socialism.

So to call these phenomena the ‘Radical Right’ looks to me to be a priori dishonest. They were/are (if anything) the Radical Left.

Denis knows all this as well as I do. So he resorts to a limp play on the Law of the Excluded Middle:

… the notion that because the UK as a state has properly friendly relations with Poland its politicians cannot be criticised takes diplomatic omerta to new heights.

[Time out to look up omerta]

Pronunciation: o