Conservative Party is starting to fragment over Cameron’s botched EU ‘renegotiation’
We ask that you consider the long-term future of the Conservative party,’ says the letter from Tory councillors to David Cameron [Image: AFP/Getty Images].
The Conservative Party is splitting over Europe – as it has in the past.
Cameron can’t back down; he has made too much of his claim to have won significant victories over the UK’s position in the European Union.
But the Eurosceptics won’t retreat either. They know that public opinion is against their prime minister – most of us agree with the Eurocrats that he couldn’t negotiate his way out of a paper bag without highly-educated assistance.
It is a conflict in which the rest of us are bystanders. All we can do is sit and watch.
We’ll have to get our information about the pros and cons of the UK’s membership of the EU elsewhere – but then, we were never going to get a straightforward summary of the arguments from the Conservative Party in any case.
Pickles has been made to look a fool, of course – but then, has he ever been anything else?
More than 130 councillors have written to the prime minister saying he must accept his renegotiation with Brussels had failed to achieve what had been promised in the party’s election manifesto.
“The only responsible and honest thing for the Conservative party – and for those in it – to do, is campaign for Britain’s exit from the European Union,” according to the letter seen by the Daily Telegraph.
“You made clear that if you did not get the deal you wanted in Europe you would not rule out campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union yourself, and we hope you will now unite your party and Britain in doing so.
“We ask that you consider the long-term future of the Conservative party and its wishes as a community, and take the views of grassroots members as seriously as your predecessors have.”
Arron Banks, the founder of Leave.EU, told the Telegraph that the campaign had signed up more than 500 Tory councillors. “I think the vast majority will be disappointed that David Cameron has instructed his MPs to ignore their views,” he said.
The letter to Cameron comes a day after Eric Pickles, the former communities and local government secretary, wrote an email to all Tory councillors urging them to back the prime minister’s drive to achieve a “better deal with our European partners”.
Source: Conservative councillors call for David Cameron to campaign for Brexit | Politics | The Guardian
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
I wish he fragmentation process would speed up. The quicker these cretins fall apart the better for the vast majority.
This is quickly becoming an utter fiasco. There is no doubt that the EU need reforming but to think an upstart like Cameron would ever be taken seriously by the EU was stretching possibilities to their limit. They laugh at him because they know we need them more than they need us. We have to stay in the EU, hopefully working with other countries’ governments, to achieve the reforms, amicably, from within. The only situations after an exit are dire. Either become a nation tradng with the EU but with no say in anything or, even worse, become more of America’s lapdog than we are currently.
Or even worse, we bow to China and go back to working in sweatshops and doing as we are told.