Denis MacShane pens a paean of praise on Comment is Free to Lech Kaczynski, the Polish President killed in Sunday's plane crash, as

a true son of Poland who sought always to uphold the honour and stature of the Polish nation...a Polish patriot...(who) reached out to Poland's Jewish community and worked with Poland's Chief Rabbi, Michael Schudrich.

Hardly the same tone adopted by Mr MacShane in his previous descriptions of President  Kaczynski's party, Law and Justice, which he described as:

gay-bashers, haters. Europe's most notoriously homophobic political party

I have to say that Mr MacShane's behaviour in this area has been deplorable. He has made it a personal mission to attack one of the men who masterminded President Kaczynski's election in 2005, the Law and Justice MEP Michal Kaminski, as an antisemite, and has described Law and Justice as

(one of those) parties that justify the Jew-killing of the second world war because communism was as great if not a greater enemy than Nazism.

Anyone who has had the temerity to question his disgusting slurs of Mr Kaminski has been tarred as a fellow traveller of extremism or, as he called me, a "Tory apologist" (despite my having voted Labour in every general election since I was 18).*

If Mr MacShane had any decency at this terrible time for Poland he would keep his crocodile tears to himself.

*As it happens, I wrote to Mr MacShane, who I have known and got on well with for many years, to point out his calumny, and he did not do me even the courtesy of an acknowledgement.