At least once a month, David Cameron (or another prominent Conservative Party member) receives a grilling regarding the Tories membership of the non-mainstream, right-wing EU group. The now-to-be-expected moral indignation of the average interviewer stems from the fact that the group contains a couple of political parties from Eastern Europe, whose members have at some time, made homophobic and/or anti-semitic remarks. 

Whilst these remarks are to be condemned, it does not immediately follow that the Conservative Party are now complicit in their discriminatory guilt. Tory detractors are not provided with a legitimate basis of attack. By all means, attack them for possibly being on the fringe of EU decision-making or for having weakened their power base within the EU, but it does not automatically follow that they are now a Party which holds extreme social views due to the political structure of the EU (or a bunch of nutters, as Nick Clegg so delicately put it).

Attacks of this nature are futile. Eventually someone with whom you usually disagree with (or even deplore) may just share a political view of your own. Nick Griffin is opposed to the Iraq War. Opposing the Iraq War does not make you a racist. Nick Griffin also believes immigration disproportionately effects the working-class, a view shared by Ed Balls. Ed Balls is not a racist.

This is a strain of thought seen all too often. Free speech advocates who do not wish to ban the BNP from all political debates, are viewed with suspicion by anti-fascist groups with totalitarian tendencies. Palestinian activists are quickly labelled anti-semites for even daring to ask difficult questions about the political situation in the Middle East, even though the same questions are regularly asked by those on the political right in Israel (notably settlers who favour a One-State solution). 

This pedantic name-calling should be given up in favour of proper, well-thought-out political scrutiny from all sides of the political spectrum.