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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics

The Tories have been dragging the UK to the far right for years

Giorgia Meloni ​​Rishi Sunak United Kingdom European Union Europe Italy
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Rishi Sunak at 10 Downing Street on 27 April 2023
The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, meets Rishi Sunak at 10 Downing Street on 27 April. Photograph: Chris Ratcliffe/EPA

Your editorial (The Guardian view on Giorgia Meloni: normalising the radical right, 23 April) correctly exposed the danger that Giorgia Meloni and her party with neofascist roots poses to core European ideals and values. But you are wrong in seeing Rishi Sunak’s flirtation as anything new for Britain’s Tories.

In 2019, after the European elections, Britain’s Tory MEPs were happy to leap into bed with the Brothers of Italy in their European Conservatives and Reformists Group. Sunak is demonstrating Tory continuity, not change.
Glyn Ford
Labour MEP (1984-2009); rapporteur for the European parliament’s Committee of Inquiry into Growth of Fascism and Racism in Europe (1985)

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