THE TORY party has threatened to split over Europe ever since Margaret Thatcher was in power. John Major, her successor, was haunted by his backbenches’ eurosceptic sniping, and was made to look weak and compromising. The Tory eurosceptics were seen by the party establishment as mad, bad, and dangerous to know. But the rank and file members were however, most supportive.
Today, in light of the euro debacle and the sceptics warnings about the dangers of a single currency being created among such diverse economies, the sceptics are now seen as being proved right. They have even been endorsed by the architect of the whole wretched project, Jacques Delors.
Mr Delors has admitted in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, that the whole project was flawed from the beginning, conceding that the ‘Anglo Saxons’, i.e. Margaret Thatcher, ‘…had a point’.
The time is approaching when trying to keep the Tory Party united over this most challenging threat to our national sovereignty, must be brought to an end. The Tory Party must split, if it wishes to remain a ‘Tory’ party; which it will no longer be if we forgo our national sovereignty and economic independence. The Tory party is a nationalist party in sway to tradition and traditional values. If it loses these by helping take this country into a European super state, then the Tory party will be effectively dead anyway; and its many party sceptics will turn toward UKIP, while its Europhile wing will join the Liberal Democrats, in the same way the Gang of Four did when they broke from Labour… after achieving only failure with the SDP.
Until now, the party membership have had to make do with the rather weak gruel that is eurosceptic rhetoric from their leaders at conference time. Talk, as they say, is cheap; and the party establishment has provided much of this in order to keep the party united.
David Cameron made promises on the Lisbon Treaty, and then reneged on them. He now promises to recoup the powers signed away to Brussels (especially legal powers handed over to the European Court). We will wait and see what he actually does to recover powers that should never have left a British parliament in the first place.
THE TORY PARTY LEADERSHIP today makes the right noises over Europe, but they are doing so in order to hold the party together. Elections must also be won, and a euro sceptic British public must also be courted. One gets the impression with David Cameron that after he makes a eurosceptic speech, he ring’s up his European colleges and, if not to apologise, then at least seek their understanding of his predicament.
Cameron is no Tory; in the same way that Blair was no socialist. Cameron sees nothing intrinsically wrong in a federal Europe. Indeed (at least before the crises of the single currency) he would have seen much merit in its creation; but hoped that his party would be won over by the passage of time as well as the currency’s success. But time has now run out, and the euro lies battered and on the ropes.
But rather than abandon the whole project, both Germany and France wish to advance speedily to the fiscal union that should have been introduced alongside political union in the first place; and this has sent danger signals to every section of the Tory Party.
Ian Duncan Smith is talking of a referendum, and Nick Clegg is saying that a referendum is not needed because the new ‘Nicomerk’ will only apply to those 17countries that are in the euro zone.
Ian Duncan Smith is right. What is about to happen will change fundamentally the European Union. Because at this time we are not involved in such a change does not carry any weight with the public, because we will be affected by it.
IF THE TORY PARTY does not take a firm stand against European political and economic union, and allow those who do believe in it to leave the party; then the party will disappear altogether in the way I suggest above.
Those within the party who believe in Tory values would remain if the party split once and for all over this issue. I say ‘issue’, but of course it is not merely an issue like any other. It goes to the very heart of our national identity and its very existence.
It comes down to this in the end. We either remain an island nation and all this implies in terms of its culture and history, or we give it all up through the mere waving of a prime ministers pen over some document, witnessed by the world’s media.
Even the French president, Nikolas Sarkozy, has shied away from Angela Merkle’s insistence on each government within the euro zone submitting their national budgets to inspection before they announce them to their national parliaments. He has done so because it represents a diminution of French national sovereignty!
So the French, like the British, are equally concerned about their sovereign independence. But you would not think so when you see both Merkle and Sarkozy bonded in harmony together before the world’s press.
But in France, Sarkozy is being satirised as a puppet of Merkle; at a time when he is due to fight a general election.
When the euro zone explodes we must be as far away from the blast as we can be; not remain determined to plant the explosives for a second blast, as our euro-beguiled Coalition seems determined to do.
The true Tory Party represents the nationalistic instincts of patriotism which has guided our history and our many victories over our enemies along the way. We have made our own decisions, whether right or wrong; we have remained independent and fought those who challenged it.
Now we have been in a period of submission since we gave up our colonies. Our national demeanour has been that of acquiescence and capitulation. We are a nation that has had to apologise for every mistake made by our colonial ancestors. But the people who the politicians are supposed to represent; deeply resents such overtures from colonies of the once British Empire, as well as the readiness of their politicians to comply with such requests for an apology.
The Tory Party may not be fully aware of their fate; but the only way they can avoid it is to seek their own reformation. The party faces the greatest challenge in its long history as a party of and for the nation. The very idea of giving away national sovereignty should be anathema to a true Tory, and not seen as an extreme position to hold, as the eurosceptics are finding.
If the party does not reform itself and continues to underperform because of the divisions over Europe; then the party will be no more. The euro crises has made the European leaders even more determined to see political and monetary union created; and for the Tory party, this means a contradiction between its original purpose as a party and the Europhiles within it who no longer see the nation state as a unit of independence. It is the Europhiles who are the enemies of Toryism, not the sceptics. The sceptics are trying to keep Britain a sovereign nation; while the Europhiles are prepared to see such ‘antiquated’ ideas thrown into the dustbin of history.
The Europhiles are the trespassers, and should leave the party and join the Liberal Democrats; they should leave and allow the Tory Party to fulfil its original purpose of defending the nation and preserving its traditions and culture. Ken Clarke would make a fine Luther and should lead the separatists away to either create their own church or join one that, on Europe at least, they would be more at home with.
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