When my friend Edward McMillan-Scott sent me an email headed ‘Give Eddie back his whip’, my first thought was: aren’t rum and sodomy enough for him?  But it turns out he’s talking about his party whip. No, no that kind of party - the Conservative one. Eddie is MEP for a vast tract of northern Britain, and has faithfully served the Tory interest there for many years. For my tastes, he’s a bit left wing; I doubt if he shares my views on immigration and asylum. But even I’m not as nasty as the Polish MEP Michal Kaminski. And this chap has cost Eddie his whip.

You see, the Tories used to belong to the more federalist grouping of MEPs in Brussels. They were pals with Angela Merkel, and Nicolas ‘Knackered’ Sarkozy. But David Cameron decided that crew were all a bit soppy, and his boys should be with a more independent-minded lot, a new group called the ECR.  He was so keen on this shift that he even allowed one of his henchmen to be passed over as a shoe-in for Vice-President, so that Kaminski could have a clear run. At that point, Eddie stood against the Pole, won the vote and lost that damn whip. Let him explain why:

‘It has now been disclosed, as Kaminski should have done to the Conservative Party when nominated for Vice-President, that he has had fascist links – he was a member of Poland’s notorious fascist National Revival (NOP) – and he tried, as its MP, to cover up one of the worst anti-Jewish atrocities in wartime Europe.

‘On July 10, 1941, Poles rounded up hundreds of Jews and put them in a barn on the outskirts of the village of Jedwabne. Egged on by the SS, the barn was set on fire. In 2001, the then president of Poland organised a national apology, but Kaminski opposed it.  He was pictured on Polish TV in 2000 using a homophobic term which even the interviewer says is offensive: Kaminski repeats it. He caused a storm at that time by using the pre-war anti-semitic slogan, “Poland for the Poles”. He denies it.

‘When I attended the ECR’s inaugural meeting, in Brussels, on June 24, we had been joined by 15 MEPs from Poland’s controversial Law and Justice party, which had incorporated MEPs from the ultra-Catholic Motherland Party. I said that I was “uncomfortable” and that I hoped that there was no-one in the room “who has had links after 1989 with extremist groups like Poland’s NOP”. The following day, as I discovered later, the reference to his membership of NOP was removed from Kaminski’s Wikipedia page. Kaminski was covering up again.’

Crikey. I thought Eddie might be remembered for his Middle Eastern fact-finding missions; perhaps for the famous ‘fish card’, his early-Nineties, Filofax-friendly guide to ordering fish in all 13 countries then comprising the EC. But now – notwithstanding his outrageous salary and expenses - he’s turned into a bit of a hero. Until Friday, when he published a piece in the Yorkshire Post, Eddie hadn’t commented publicly on his position. But one wonders how David Cameron will now react? If he returns the whip, he’s admitting he was wrong about the ECR. And admitting they’ve made mistakes seems impossible for our politicians.