eurealist.co.uk

The Conservative parliamentary party are raising the spectre of another change in the rules for the election of their leader.

The aim of the move, also being considered by grandees on the party’s Board, is to avoid a repeat of the leadership contest in 2001. Then the, party members had the temerity to elected Ian Duncan Smith over Kenneth Clarke, despite Mr Duncan Smith having less support among MPs.

The intention now is to undo the more democratic system put in place by Mr William Hague in which the parliamentary party must offer a choice of two candidates for election by the whole party. This was the democratic system that produced Mr Ian Duncan-Smith as leader he was of course later deposed by a cabal of Conservative MPs and replaced by Mr Howard. The MPs did not then offer a vote to the party because they did deals amongst themselves to deny the party its choice of leader.

The fact is that the men in grey suits were never happy with the grass roots having a say in the leadership or even the running of the party, one Tory grandee expresses the thoughts behind this when he stated that “Ordinary Conservative members (ditto Labour) tend to be more extreme and out of touch than our parliamentarians” He could have also added more Eusceptic but instead inferred it as he continued;I voted for Kenneth Clarke (despite being a Euro-sceptic) because I knew that he could appeal to swing voters, many of whom voted Labour in 1997 and again in 2001. The majority of our MPs agreed, but our members did not – and look what happened.

Well we perhaps ought to do as he suggests and look at what happened, despite the hype the media dislike the parliamentary party working against him, IDS in the twenty months he was leader saw off his rivals, won the local elections by a landslide overturned the party’s ten-year record of double-digit deficit in the opinion polls. When he became leader the Tories were in disarray after a second hammering in the elections and were twenty points behind Labour in opinion polls. He launched a policy of decentralisation, which was the core theme that ran through everything, breaking down the culture of control, which we have seen is very much on the increase with this New Labour administration, and is apparent in the words of the Tory grandee quoted before.

IDS aware that the public were not happy and not connecting with the people said “I’m not going to ask you to trust me, because I recognise that this trust has been so abused that you’re not inclined to trust anybody. So what I say is: the first thing I as a politician have to learn is to trust you. We are going to trust people to get on with their lives.” He had said the Tory MEPs were to leave the EPP group in the EU Parliament because the EPP supports the removal of all national vetoes within the proposed European constitution and call for a single EU income tax. EPP parties also want Britain and France to surrender their permanent seats on the UN Security Council.

Since ousting IDS The Conservatives have now started to undermine and reverse the steps forward in democracy that were being introduced, Tory MEPs are now back in the EPP group in the EU Parliament and Mr Howard has made it very clear that the Tory party is standing firm on EU membership no matter what his grass root supporters may think, and with this measure, they will remove the power of the Tory grass roots to have a say in the leadership and direction of the party.

There is already a clear detachment of senior politicians – of all parties – from the problems and concerns of ordinary people. To implement this change would show a total contempt for even the most loyal supporters and will display both stupidity and arrogance.

The fact that the old Tory Europhiles, the very same ones who have connived to secretly give our sovereignty away to the EU, Hesletine and Clarke are solidly behind this move, Heseltine, said “the party should press ahead with the changes. “By the nature of things, the activists are going to be a degree to the more extreme of the party than the parliamentarians, “They will tend to be older. They will tend to represent the narrower church within the Conservative Party and they will, perhaps, not have the same perspective about the political reality that winning power requires.”

This should indicate quite clearly that this is a move by the Tory Europhiles to sideline the modernisation and membership of the party and reinstall the undemocratic system which has worked so effectively to integrate Britain into the EU, without the people being offered a voice in the process. It also indicates that the Tory party are not interested in democracy or the wishes of the people of this country, they are only interested in gaining power so they can continue what they started in the 1970s and if they do not gain power they are happy for New Labour to finish their work for them.

What the Tory Europhiles fail to understand is that despite their interventions, which are producing muddled policies that do not stand up to a moments analysis, do not make sense and will not work they have lost the big idea, that have lost the trust and they have lost the lead they had before they got rid on the only chance they had to form a government. Now they want to ensure that after then next debacle at the polls the party will not be able to get rid of their chosen leader and return the party to the right democratic track which it was on.