Denis MacShane supports boycott!

Even quite recently Denis MacShane was opposed to the idea of boycotting a state. He even linked the academic boycott of Israel to the Toulouse killings a few months ago:

There is little media or political concern when the National Union of Journalists or the University and College Union back boycotts of Jewish journalists or Israeli academics. The NUJ or UCU would never dream of boycotting Saudi Arabia or China, where human rights and core freedoms are ruthlessly suppressed. But when it comes to Jews in Israel, the double-standard of contemporary antisemitism prevails.

Will the Toulouse massacre wake the antisemitism deniers in politics and the media? Probably not. Sadly, it will be easier to use the background of the alleged killer to drum up more xenophobic hate against European Muslims, despite the fact that, to Islamists, Muslims who serve their nation loyally in uniform are also victims of hate and violence.

 So opposed to BDS was he that he grotesquely misrepresented what it was all about but he was writing in the Jewish Chronicle where such misrepresentations are fairly routine.

Well now, according to this Guardian article, Denis MacShane does support a boycott.  He even criticises the fact that the UK was a late addition to the boycott list:

The former Labour Europe minister Denis MacShane said on Thursday that Britain should have been the first, not the last, European nation to boycott Euro 2012. MacShane, who raised Tymoshenko's treatment in the Commons last October, accused William Hague of double standards in taking action against Kiev but not against other worse regimes that abuse human rights. He described Tory human rights policy as a "shambolic mess of incohrent contradictions and double standards."

He added: "At long last and after weeks of urging Cameron joins Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande in boycotting Ukraine Euro 2012 over the disgusting treatment of Yulia Tymoshenko. But Britain should taken a lead on this...instead of tailing in behind other European leaders. Cameron and Hague show a shaming double standard as they roll out the red carpet for the killers and torturers of Bahrain but now boycott Ukraine, where the treatment of Mrs Tymoshenko is unacceptable, but not as bad as anything in Bahrain."

"Shaming double standard" anyone?