Tories bottle out
12 September 2006
To capture the Eurosceptic vote in the Conservative party leadership election, David Cameron pledged to pull Tory MEPs out of the Euro-fanatic EPP Group. His promise was to do so "in months, not years". Now, in a major volte face he has abandoned this promise and will leave the Tories in the EPP till, at least, the next election in 2009.
His promise to then form a new group has to be measured against this recent climbdown and a similar broken promise in the last parliament. In 2001 Iain Duncan Smith also pledged to leave the EPP in 2004, but when the time came it did not happen.
UUP MEP, Jim Nicholson, sits with the Tories and so he too is embedded in the federalist EPP. No doubt, given his own Party's facility to renege on promises - remember his own 1999 election slogan, "No Guns, No Government" - he has no difficulty with such political somersaulting. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, he has been very silent about the marriage to the EPP.
The Conservative Party, and Mr Nicholson, claim to be against an EU Constitution. Yet, here they are as an integral part of the Party driving forward the demand for implementation of the rejected Constitution. With EPP Leader, Hans-Gert Poettering due to take over as President of the European Parliament in January 2007 and his Geerman Government at the same time taking over the Presidency of Europe, we can expect a renewed push on the Constitution.
If Cameron and the Tories bottled out on this simple pledge, what confidence could anyone have that in government they would not do the same on their supposedly Eurosceptic policies?
