eurealist.co.uk

I have not read this site much in the past, but can recomend if only for the last two posts which is all I have read. A thoughtful look at the hunting issue and the story that “Senior Tory MPs are drawing up secret plans to reduce the role of ordinary Conservative members in future leadership elections, a move that is threatening to divide the party”. well worth reading.

The Edge of England’s Sword:

“The test of England

This week’s torrent of legislation rolling out from Parliament sets up 2005 to be the definitive year for the future of this country - which is why I am so bitter about the Tories’ listlessness. For a complete rundown of what things have come to, see the Torygraph, but the most momentous are excerpted below:

The Civil Contingencies Bill. If ’something happens’, the Government will be able to repeal or suspend any Act, apart from the Human Rights Act. The Lords tried this week to preserve Habeas Corpus and the Bill of Rights (1689), but the Government insisted they might have to be dumped, too.

The Hunting Bill. The Lords won’t pass this, but it will be deemed to have passed, thanks to the provisions of the Parliament Act, unless these are found in this case to be unlawful.”

Snip

And that therefore is the test I allude to in the title. With a moribund Opposition, draconian laws appearing on the statute book and their backs against the wall, friends of Hunting are in for a long and difficult fight, but the seeds of success or failure will be sown in 2005. The Countryside Alliance is the best small ‘c’ conservative campaigning organisation this country has ever seen, and over the years ahead it must grow stronger and, I think, forge links with the representatives of the other disenfranchised and ignored sections of England (e.g. the Campaign for an English Parliament). By doing so, a coalition broad enough to ensure that the ban will be repealed some day can be forged, and if that happens, it will be the the beginnings of the populist conservative movement we desperately need.

And on THE Tory Story

And its not just in electing their own leaders that they have shown themselves up. One of my keenest memories of the 1990s is the night of the final Maastricht vote. A vote which John Major had declared would go his way or result in a General Election which the Tories would lose (as a way to force the Tory rebels into line). It was high drama of the sort that Westminster systems excel at - half-dead MPs being rolled through the lobbies on stretchers, dissenters being manhandled into the relevant lobbies by their more partisan colleagues - and then in the end it was a tie, and the Speaker’s casting vote by convention went with the government and that terrible Treaty became law. Not every MP voted that night. It turned out that one of the rebels - I forget who - threatened with the end of his political career but convinced the Treaty was unspeakably bad for the country sat the whole thing out weeping in the lobby. Had he voted his conscience the Treaty would have been voted down and the government would have fallen but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. And that profile in courage ladies and gentlemen was one of the more independent and daring members of the parliamentary party.