Tory grassroots’ fury at Cameron order
DAVID Cameron endured the wrath of Conservative activists yesterday after he ordered his MPs to ignore local parties’ views on Europe.
Association chairman, grassroots campaigners and Tory grandees savaged the Prime Minister, who was accused of contempt for members’ views. On Wednesday he told MPs not to decide their view on the EU referendum ‘ because of what your constituency association might say’.
In the House of Commons, Mr Cameron said: ‘If you think Britain is, on balance, better off in, go with what you think.’
But yesterday party figures from across Britain told the Mail the PM’s comments were ‘annoying’ and an insult and that it was an obligation of MPs to listen to their constituents views.
Osman Dervish, a councillor and chairman of Romford Conservative Association in East London, said: ‘Every constituency chairman has to take their members on board. We should not just show contempt for what the members say. You can’t just ignore them. There are concerns among the grassroots about the remarks he has made about us in the past.’
The episode raised memories of the 2013 incident in which Lord Feldman, the party chairman and a close friend of the PM, was accused of describing activists as ‘mad, swivel-eyed loons’. He furiously denied the accusations.
Ian Trigger, a retired judge who chairs the Clwyd West Conservative Association, said: ‘Conservative associations, up and down the country, are the bedrock of the Conservative Party. Anyone who does not bear that in mind is making a mistake.’
Aiden Ruff, chairman of Berwick-upon-Tweed Conservative Association, said: ‘They have to listen to what the grassroots are saying.’
Andrew Mackness, chairman of the Conservative Association in Rochester and Strood, Kent, said: ‘I am annoyed he told MPs they should ignore their associations. They are the people who put them there, not the Prime Minister.’
Ed Costello, chairman of Grassroots Conservatives, an independent activist group, said Mr Cameron had ‘deliberately ignored’ what associations had to say since he became PM, leaving them to feel ‘pointless and useless’.
A Downing Street source denied Mr Cameron’s remarks were an attempt to put pressure on MPs to ignore their constituents.