Thursday, January 23, 2014

The worst thing about Mike Hancock

A year ago I quoted Mike Hancock's immortal words: "Why this obsession with political prisoners in Azerbaijan?"

A post by Daniel Hamilton on Trending Central shows that Hancock's attitude to human rights in Eastern Europe is far, far worse than that:
Through thick and thin, he has been an outspoken supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The former Hungarian MP Mátyás Eörsi who had the indignity of sitting beside Hancock in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe said, “he is the most pro-Russian MP from among all of the countries of western Europe. When it came to debates on Putin [and] freedom of the media… Michael always defended Russia… According to him, Russia really is a fully-fledged democracy”. The travails of his former researcher-come-lover Ekaterina Zatuliveter, which involved allegations of involvement in Russian espionage at the very heart of Westminster, are well known. 
During the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, which saw tanks move within miles of the country’s capital city Tbilisi, Hancock was an outspoken supporter of the Kremlin. As bombs rained down on Georgia, Hancock rather astonishingly delivered a speech thanking the Russian government for preventing the “genocide of the peaceful South Ossetia population”, while simultaneously ignoring the charred Georgian villages following Russian air strikes. Following the conflict, he wrote an article endorsing the de facto independence of South Ossetia and calling for the breakaway region’s “boundaries and borders to be respected”, despite the displacement of more than 30,000 ethnic Georgians from the region.
And so on and on, crowned with a reference by Hancock to "the so-called Armenian genocide".

All of which makes we wish I had done more than poke fun from the sidelines. I should have done more research and publicised Hancock's views long before now.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know, if what he's been accused of is true, I really don't think supporting Putin — bad as that is — is worse.

But yes, you should have publicised it earlier.

Anonymous said...

Supporting Putin is only the half of it. Apart from his sexual indiscretions, Hancock also formerly had a Russian Girlfriend who was eventually deported for spying for the Russians, using Hancock as a conduit for information. It's debatable as to how much Hancock knew of this. Cos of course an old rather ugly hairy man in a position of political power had clearly attracted a pretty young Russian woman through his personality alone.

Or so Hancock would have you believe he thought.

All this has been documented on Guido Fawkes.

I wouldn't go so far as to accuse Hancock of being a Russian spy......

Anonymous said...

The worst thing about Mike Hancock is that he hasnt had the decency to step down as an MP.

His position is totally untenable.

Wtf are Clegg and Farron playing at? They should be telling him to ask for the Chiltern Hundreds forthwith.

James said...

@Anonymous 12.05

What makes you think that Hancock will listen? Apparently he has threatened his local party that if they don't reselect him in 2015, he will stand as an independent.

Francis Horner said...

I do find it worrying just how many illiberal people there seem to be in the Liberal Democrats these days - its not just Hancock, there's Ward, Tongue etc, not to mention the rampant misogyny breaking out amongst Rennard's supporters.

Old Blue Eyes said...

The worst thing about Hancock is that he was born.