Starmer and Corbyn’s Putinist friend

Robert Fico (above left, then Prime Minister of Slovakia) greeting Jeremy Corbyn (above right, then Labour Party leader) at a conference of their European socialist parties in 2016. For Fico and Corbyn, the conference slogan “Saving Europe”, should translate as “Betraying Europe”.

Yesterday’s election in Slovakia has been reported in the mainstream press (and even by some H&D readers who should know better) as a victory for the ‘populist right’, or even for ‘nationalists’.

In fact the election winner (and given the fissiparous nature of Slovak politics it’s important to point out that he ‘won’ with less than 23% of the vote and will need to find coalition partners) was the ex-communist Robert Fico, whose social democratic party Smer remains a member of all the usual international alliances of mainstream leftwing parties.

The only reason why some on the vacuous “dissident right” have welcomed Fico’s victory, is that this Slovak leftist is a de facto supporter of the Kremlin’s anti-Ukrainian, anti-European aggression.

Fico has insisted that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was a war started “by Ukrainian nazis and fascists”. And predictably this Stalinist rhetoric has been echoed by the Kremlin’s useful idiots, including some so-called ‘nationalists’.

Robert Fico (above right) with his German socialist comrade Martin Schulz, then President of the European Parliament, in 2012.

Ironically, Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is a longstanding partner of Fico’s party in three international socialist alliances – the Party of European Socialists, Progressive Alliance, and Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats. The Slovak party is also part of an even more leftwing organisation, the Socialist International, where Starmer’s Labour now only has “observer” status.

In 2006 Smer was suspended from the Party of European Socialists because Fico accepted a ‘far right’ party into his coalition government, but this suspension ended in 2008 and Fico now seems to be accepted by the likes of Starmer and Germany’s social democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz as a good socialist comrade!

During the coming days and weeks, Smer will look for coalition allies. The Slovak nationalist party SMS might again be one of them, but with 5.6% (10 MPs) it has less than half the support it enjoyed when it joined one of Fico’s previous coalitions in 2006.

The real kingmakers this time will be another leftwing party, Hlas, with 14.7% and 27 MPs. We shouldn’t expect much in the way of political principle in these negotiations, still less should we expect anything resembling racial nationalism, whether or not SMS ministers join the payroll.

What we can sadly continue to expect is that the ignorant and deluded ‘dissident right’ will continue to disgrace themselves by applauding Putinist victories, even when these victories are for parties of the socialist / social democratic left.

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