Denis MacShane is an odious man, some of the stuff he has written in recent months smearing eurosceptics as basically neo-nazis really crossed over the line. He has been comprehensively debunked time and time again by Britain’s former ambassador to Poland, Charles Crawford. Nevertheless the media still give the professional Pole a platform, the Guardian gave him space on the Polish air crash tragedy yesterday.

What struck Guido reading his eulogy to the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, wasn’t the shameless shift in gear by MacShane.  He called him a “Polish patriot” who “reached out Poland’s Jewish community” so soon after accusing Kaczynski together with his party of racism and homophobia when they allied with the Tories in the new eurosceptic ECRG grouping in the EU parliament.

No, what really stunned Guido was this line on the air crash once again revealing the sense of self-entitlement of our political class:

There is a meanness about the treatment of government representatives who, in the name of finance ministry parsimony, are expected to fly travel in outdated, low-tech, uncomfortable planes.

You mean like the ones your government sends our troops and Nimrod pilots to die in?