The staggering hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton

Today Hillary Clinton slammed the Tories for failing to join the recent pile-on against Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban. In a speech described by the Guardian as ‘stinging’, Clinton said it was ‘disheartening’ that Conservative MEPs in Brussels voted to ‘shield Viktor Orban from censure’. She was referring to the 18 Tories in the European Parliament who last month rejected the invoking of the punishing Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty against Orban’s Hungary for being a prejudiced and illiberal state. Hungary is no longer a real democracy but an ‘illiberal’ one, said Clinton — and it’s shameful that Tories are cosying up with such a regime.

It’s hard to work out what is most galling about Hillary’s latest act of haughty, self-righteous condemnation of people and politicians who think differently to her. There’s the historical illiteracy. In a line that her speechwriters knew would hit the headlines — and it did — Clinton said the Tories’ refusal to slam Orban suggests they have ‘come a long way from the party of Churchill or Thatcher’. Right. Because Churchill would never have sided with a political strongman from the East that he disliked and opposed in order to achieve a broader political goal, would he? Perhaps while she’s at Oxford today, Clinton could sign up for a booster course on modern British history.

There is also the staggering hypocrisy. Being lectured by Hillary Clinton about getting too close to foreign authoritarians is like being told off by Shane MacGowan for boozing too much. Clinton is the queen of tea-and-hugs with dictators. She described Egypt’s authoritarian ruler Hosni Mubarak as a personal friend. There are loads of photos of her being chummy with him. And lest we forget, his rule of Egypt from 1981 until 2011 — when the people turfed him out — was essentially one long state of emergency in which dissidents were ‘disappeared’ and criticism of the government severely punished.