Helen, Your Freedom and Ours, posted on the Bruges Group meeting, as did I, although she chose to highlight Peter Hitchen's call for a new Conservative Party to be formed. That this becomes self evident is a view that grows by the day as the 'message' being put out by the that party becomes more and more confusing. Let us leave to one side, for a moment, Cameron's 'repatriating powers' and 'renegotiating our terms of membership' policies, ones that we all know are not 'on the table' - and concentrate on statements/articles being placed in the media.
On Monday Lord Ashcroft had a piece in the Daily Telegraph in which he lamented the failure of his party to increase their standing in the opinion polls, in which he asks who the voters are blaming for their pain. Stating that part of their support is that voters do not believe Labour has a credable alternative, he omits the fact that, at present, neither do the electorate believe the Conservatives have either.
Just two days after a debate on whether a referendum should be granted, we have what may be termed a damage limitation exercise on Conservative Home, lo and behold, by the same author, in which he tackles the same subject although from a different angle by adding a different reason. Listing all the same reasons and citing that the question of our EU membership is a 'distraction', he completely ignores the fact that our membership of the EU and the constraints imposed by that membership are, in general, the reason for our difficulties in encouraging growth in the economy and in the creating of jobs. Arguing that immigration is not the big issue, but that what the public care about is the impact on jobs, housing, social services beggars belief when it is obvious that immigration is the cause of all those public worries.
It would appear that the Conservative Party under the leadership control of Cameron is about to commit self-burial, so big is the hole into which they are obviously digging themselves. On the Coffee House Spectator blog, Sam Gyimah, Conservative MP for East Surrey, posts an article repeating the Cameron line about the need for repatriation of powers and the need to renegotiate our membership. Accepting that this will never happen for reasons of 'acqui communitaire' anyway, it will never happen during the lifetime of this Parliament due to the publicly stated position of Nick Clegg, one which is covered in this report from the Daily Telegraph. In contrast, yesterday Politics Home (£) quotes David Lidington stating that work on the repatriation of powers has 'already started', which makes one wonder just what the hell is going on.
Actually we all do know what the hell is going on - the public is being 'softened up' through the process of mind control to accept the situation that the Conservatives have tried, but........... - and thereby will we be consigned to what the European Union has always stated is its aim, namely ever closer union. That the Conservative Party needs to change tack is illustrated by this article by Jeremy Warner in today's Daily Telegraph. If Cameron is intent on this 'renegotiation thingy' of his, if he is intent on safeguarding London's financial sector, if he is intent ensuring that Britain is not swamped by eurozone control, then he has only one course of action and that is to politely inform Brussels that we are off - byeee. Personally I am totally fed up with all this prevarication about the millions of jobs which are dependent on our membership of the EU, the false assertion that 50% of our trade is with the EU (especially when the reply to Lord Stoddart's question in the HoL showed that our export figures are flawed) - if those reasons are true then show us, give us the cost/benefit analysis for which I have been pleading. On that point, I have yet to see Gerard Batten's assertions, contained in his analysis, refuted by Cameron et all.
Peter Hitchen's call for a 'new' Conservative Party, whilst welcome, won't happen as there are too many career politicians present in the existing one. Some may say that the nearest thing we have to a Conservative Party is Ukip and, although a member of that party, I have to agree with Hitchen's opinion of them. How to break the dictatorial stranglehold that our politicians have on this country? The sooner the public can somehow be educated to a more participatory form of a political system, along the lines of that enjoyed by the Swiss, the better for this country and it's people.
