Tim Montgomerie has put his country before his party. Will others do the same?

In the wasteland of principles that is Westminster, Tim Montgomerie has always been an exception.  The area is filled with ambitious, bland careerists whose idea of taking a stand (as with most of the commentariat) consists of trying to locate two ‘extremes’ before comfortably wedging themselves equidistant between them.  But in resigning from a lifetime’s membership of the Conservative party, Tim Montgomerie has demonstrated that there is still room for principles in politics.

Because nothing has so highlighted Westminster’s prevalence of careerism over principle than the aftermath of the great EU renegotiation charade.  In private absolutely nobody thinks that David Cameron achieved anything real with his ‘renegotiation’.  Yet in public a swathe of job-seekers in the Conservative party are seriously trying to herald this cretinous fakery as an actual achievement.  Consider just one example.

The Conservative MP Nick Herbert launched his career by being a Eurosceptic.  Indeed his stepping-stone into Parliament was heading a group that opposed ever-closer union. Now after milling around Westminster for a few years it is announced that he is heading a group of pro-EU Conservatives who will argue that the Prime Minister has magisterially won everything everyone ever wanted out of the EU.  Is that because the EU has become an infinitely more admirable organisation over the course of the last fifteen years?  Or is it more likely the case that Mr Herbert just wants a better job sometime soon?

It isn’t only a Conservative party problem.  Many members of both main parties are currently trying to invent ways to explain how they could back the EU at this juncture when they have been criticising it throughout their political lives.  But the problem of dishonesty in the Conservative party is particularly pronounced.  As Tim Montgomerie says in his resignation letter in the Times:

If Britain remains chained to Brussels after this charade we’ll be in a weaker position than before.