David Cameron’s letter to party members added insult to injury after a week of headlines about ‘Loongate’ and the Tory leadership’s decision to bulldoze through the Same Sex Marriage Bill with the help of Labour. He suggested that ‘you change things not be criticising from your armchair but by getting out and doing’. Who does he think is knocking on doors week after week, taking the flak for his unpopular lurch from ill-conceived policy to ill-conceived policy?
Many of us have been involved in the fight for conservatism all our lives. But under Cameron’s watch we are seeing a crisis in conservatism and polling results which would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Iain Martin says today that it ‘feels like the Right has split irrevocably’. There is a deep split, but it is in the Conservative party, not the Right. In one foul swoop, Cultural Marxists, who have been working behind the scenes for decades in Britain, have broken both marriage and the Conservative party, once the greatest of British institutions. The leadership has created an all-out civil war in conservatism – and as things stand Nigel Farage is winning it.
Having lost the argument on Same Sex Marriage with his own party, David Cameron relied on Labour to get the Bill through its latest stage. Amendments that sought to protect those who will fall victim to this culturally Marxist legislation were tossed aside. Tim Loughton’s perfectly reasonable amendment to extend civil partnerships was dismissed out of hand in a grubby deal with the Left.
And the party’s response to the ‘loon gate’ allegations showed contempt for its loyal membership that we had long known existed. The nature of the Conservative Party Board meeting on the matter, as well as their decision to reject Brian Binley’s request for an investigation, confirms that contempt. The meeting, which lasted no more than 40 minutes, was ‘convivial’, and decided that an alleged serious insult to the members of the Conservative Party by its leadership required no investigation. If an investigation conclusively revealed that the attributed comments were not made by a senior party member, then that would set minds at rest. To dismiss any investigation smacks of whitewash and ‘chumocracy’.
Following Conservative Party National Convention member Paul Swaddle’s letter of support to the Prime Minister on Sunday, senior members of the Conservative Party are currently canvassing members to send another letter of support in the space of a week. Using Party networks to get a small group of one’s own supporters to publicly write to each other every few days is a sign of terminal collapse and panic.
After the events of the last week, it is highly unlikely that grassroots members of the Conservative party (those that do not leave for UKIP) will forget what has happened or ever support David Cameron again.
Miles Windsor is chair of Conservative Grassroots.
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