David Cameron's European buddies

There's been much discussion in the British press over the UK Conservative Party's decision to invite the Polish politician, Michał Kamiński, to a fringe meeting at their conference. To put it mildly, Mr Kamiński is a controversial figure. In Poland, he's best known for having been President Lech Kaczyński's official spokesman. He has, at least according to several articles in the British press, something of a chequered history. It's been alleged that Mr Kamiński has been a member of the Polish neo-Nazi organisation, National Revival - although Mr Kamiński himself states that he only belonged to the youth organisation, and has attempted to downplay his links with it. His public denials that Poles bore any responsibility for the atrocities committed against the Jews in the Polish town of Jedwabne in 1941 are even more controversial.

But how big a political impact is all of this going to have? In terms of damaging the Conservative Party's electoral prospects, my guess is very little. Mr Kamiński, after all, has participated in a fringe debate; it's not as though he has shared a public platform with David Cameron, the Connservative Party leader. And while the whole incident has whipped the Conservatives' left-wing critics into paroxysms of rage, I doubt that it has resonated particularly strongly among the public at large.

Of greater significance, perhaps, is the damage this might do to the Conservatives' relations with other European parties, particulary those on the centre-right. The Conservatives are now part of a new Eurosceptic bloc in the European Parliament, which includes Prawo i Sprawiedliwóść (Law and Justice), the party to which Mr Kamiński belongs. It's worth noting that PiS itself is not even the largest centre-right party in Poland. The current governing party, Platforma Obywatelska (Civic Platform) has in recent years been the main opponent of PiS. Ideologically, PO is more economically liberal, more pro-European, less nationalistic and generally less populist than PiS. In fact PO would not look out of place in most Western European parliaments. This serves to emphasize that even in Poland itself, to say nothing of Europe as a whole, PiS is hardly a dominating force.

The danger for Mr Cameron is that his new European buddies will damage (or perhaps already have damaged) his relations with other centre-right European parties. Given that Angela Merkel is the German Chancellor, and France has President Sarkozy, this might well cause some significant diplomatic problems for Mr Cameron if (and it looks likely) he becomes prime minister next year. This may well lead to less influence within the EU itself. It's quite possible that the Conservative leader may well live to regret his panderings to the Eurosceptic wing of his party. His new friends could become something of a mill-stone around the neck of the next Conservative government.