Activist quits in fury at PM’s failures
A TORy activist yesterday quit the party with a furious broadside against David Cameron’s ‘conjuring trick’ on Europe.
Tim Montgomerie, founder of the influential ConservativeHome website, said the Prime Minister’s botched renegotiation was the ‘final straw’ after failures in other areas such as immigration.
He said that while he would not be joining another party, he would not give any more time, love or money to the ‘Cameron project’.
The former chief of staff to Eurosceptic cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘I’m just glad that Mrs Thatcher cannot see what her party has become.’
Mr Montgomerie, who also worked for William Hague when he was leader, said he joined the Tories 28 years ago under Margaret Thatcher, not just for ‘the colour of her politics, but the strength’.
But he said the renegotiation ‘charade’ over the EU was the ‘final straw and it followed abject failure on immigration, deficit reduction and inequality’.
In an article for the Times, where he is employed as a columnist, he wrote that Mr Cameron’s deal had achieved little.
‘The 69 per cent who think he got a bad deal are right,’ he said. ‘The newspapers that called the deal a joke, conjuring trick and delusion weren’t exaggerating. But it took the fourth estate rather than Tory MPs to point out the emperor’s naked state.
‘With a few honourable exceptions Conservative parliamentarians were silent when Mr Cameron, pretending to have changed anything that matters, stood at the same dispatch box at which Mrs Thatcher vowed to fight European integration. Nothing registers more strongly on the social injustice front than recommending staying in the EU.
‘It remains the greatest source of social misery on the continent – requiring intense austerity in countries such as Greece, and causing terrible youth unemployment across southern Europe from which millions will suffer lifelong scars. I’m just glad that Mrs Thatcher cannot see what her party has become.’
Mr Montgomerie, a longtime critic of Mr Cameron, co-founded the Centre for Social Justice think-tank and the Conservative Christian Fellowship, becoming one of the best-known Tory activists outside the parliamentary party.
In his article he also said: ‘If Britain remains chained to Brussels after this charade we’ll be in a weaker position than before. We’ll be the country that made Eurosceptic noises for decades but capitulated when it mattered. The EU’s bureaucracy, courts and politicos will see us as all-bark, no-bite moaning minnies.’
He said Lady Thatcher always understood that ‘it was what you did with power that counted’. ‘Could David Cameron be much more different?’ he asked. Mr Montgomerie claimed that Mr Cameron’s policies were little different to those favoured by ‘Blairites or Cleggites’ – a stark contrast to positions taken by the Iron Lady.
He said that, under Mr Cameron, the Tory party had lost voters to Ukip while gaining the support of former Liberal Democrats and, potentially, Labour voters who did not like Jeremy Corbyn – a coalition which was not strong enough for the long term.
‘The PM will no doubt treat with disdain my resignation like the departure of tens of thousands of once-loyal grassroots members who have already walked away,’ he wrote. ‘But one day an opposition party will get its act together or a wholly new party will emerge.
‘At some point, Britain will notice that the Conservatives didn’t fix the roof when the sun was shining.’
Mr Montgomerie’s broadside did not go down well with some Tories. Backbencher Guto Bebb, who represents Aberconwy, tweeted: ‘Should we care that a US-based never-elected Tory has resigned?’
‘Greatest source of
social misery’