Bigoted thugs? No thanks.

The Conservative party is a broad church, and I am happy with the socially liberal membership policies of the party which are backed by an unequivocal set of membership rules that exclude any manifestation of racism, bigotry or discrimination based on class, caste, colour or sexuality. It does mean there are certain folk with whom I would not feel comfortable having in the party. Members and supporters of the 'Britain First' fascist movement  are among those for whom our party should offer no shelter from the collapse of the far-right. There is, to be frank, no place in our party for any of these thugs - and suggestions in the Indescribablyawful that BF members have been encouraged to infiltrate the party must be taken seriously. You're not wanted.

Fascist thugs - Not wanted in the Conservative Party

This was a problem that faced Nigel when he set up BrexitCorp™, and one of the reasons he structured it as he did, with no members to embarrass him as they had done in UKIP, just contributors and supporters who could be easily disowned if exposed in the media. Largely it has worked, and he's managed to keep the entryist fascists at arms length.

One or two try to creep in under the wire. In Scotland ex-UKIP MEP David Coburn tried to sneak into the Conservative Party using the online application - but was quickly rumbled, and his membership rapidly invalidated by Scottish leader Jackson Carlaw. They've heard enough nasty remarks from this chap in the past under his UKIP coat.

Ooot - David Coburn

Labour made the mistake of making the fascists welcome in their party. Didn't turn out well.

Update 19.30
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BF capo Paul Golding, jailed twice in the last 5 years for religiously aggravated harassment, also applied for party membership, and has also been rejected. The ES has the story.

BF Thug Golding - also ooot.

The best laid plans ..

Well, I was expecting now to do a piece on the Conservative manifesto, but I'm afraid the party has rather cocked it up. Not only was the live video feed lousy and broken, but nowhere is there a link to the .pdf manifesto and costings supplement. I was also sort of expecting, as a party member, an email with a link to the document, but no such luck.

I shall have to write to that nice Mr Cleverly, who as Chairman is responsible for the housekeeping, I expect.

Sorry, nothing to see here.

Update
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Not just me, then. The Chief Political Correspondent and Assistant Editor, Daily Telegraph, Chairman of the Lobby, tweets

 

Runners and riders for the Downing Street Cup

This is not quite a parochial post as the Leader chosen by the 160,000 members of the Conservative Party will also be the Prime Minister - so everyone has an interest in these hustings. Here are my initial opinions

Mediocity is one of the French bourgouis virtues (Assiduité, Economie, Mediocrité, Conjugalité, Tenacité, Optomisme, Dynamisme, Modernité*) but it's never been an English one. Yet this field of runners has more mediocre, almost unrecognisable, candidates than any other I can remember. And a good deal of utterly unrealistic self-love from those who have absolutely no chance.

Boris Johnson - Best election-winner but a man with flaws. He frightens the EU and is the biggest obstacle to the Brexit Party's ambitions. Can he be trusted to deliver? That's the question

Dominic Raab - Bland and clean with good Brexit credentials but does he have leadership charisma - the sort that comforts Remainers and wins Conservative voters back to the fold?

Michael Gove - Pretty well loathed by the public for being a didactic arse and by Tory Brexiteers for betraying Boris, his loyalty to May will not have helped him. No electoral charisma, a cold technocrat. Might make a decent Chancellor so long as he is sackable.

Andrea Leadsom - Decent all-rounder with a spine who was not afraid to stand up to the sanctimonious dwarf. Sufficient distance from May to be credible. But however unfair, illogical and plain wrong it may be, I have a feeling in my water that being a woman may disadvantage her this time around and next time she may be just a liitle too long in the tooth.

Jeremy Hunt - Another bland and clean minister of indeterminate age indeterminate accomplishments and indeterminate ability. I can't recall a single interesting thing about him.

Penny Mordaunt -  I like Penny. A lot. Her maiden speech still stands out for warmth, real humour, intelligence and a finely judged use of opportunity without seeming forward. She has myriad sterling qualities. However, the one she lacks - through no fault of her own - is ministerial / cabinet experience. Our next Leader (but one).

Rory Stewart - The Party's fantasist - both with a record of making stuff up and the delusion that he is electable. Said to be an original thinker. He has a weird face.

Sajid Javid - Clean and bland and calculating. He's nursed his career with an eye to the top spot and puts his credentials on public display in a noticeable way. But what does he believe in, apart from himself?

Amber Rudd -  Just No. Her delusion that she can partner with Boris is pure unrealistic fantasy, just like her support of May's treasonous deal

David Lidington - David would win prizes for mediocrity. If Blandness were an Olympic event, he'd take gold.

Matthew Hancock - Who?

James Cleverly - Another of the Dulwich School hopefuls. A real crawler. No real ability.

Steve Baker - A competent man with real beliefs. Also a trained engineer and ex-RAF officer. Ideologically sound. Superb ministerial material - but does he connect with voters?

Esther McVey - Again, a strong and capable personality with her feet on the ground. Much respect. Again, good cabinet material but does she have a natural sense of humour? Humour is important to me. Not essential, but I find those that have it are better people.

*All English Men Chew Toffee On Dreary Mondays has fixed these tedious virtues in my head for forty years. 

Well, today's the day

For those of you voting today - which should be all of you unless like me you've already voted - I can only offer the advice given yesterday by Conservative Home to members of my Party.

Well, last night she barricaded herself into Number Ten and refused to meet any of her ministers. No doubt Hammond, Sedwill and others dependent on her for their own survival are even now urging her to hang in there, but I expect it's all over.

This election is good for one thing - bringing the Party's closet LibDems out. Osborne and Heseltine are both out, and Major is wriggling with frustration at feeling unable to publicly follow them.

May's utter stupidity means a Conservative vote in the region of 4 - 6%. Dan Hannan may be out of a job, but he should have been anyway by now, so nothing to be sorry for.

So taking ConHome's sage advice, I can only say to you all

 
Update
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HM is visiting Heathrow today - and looking quite stunning

When the Liberal Party was wiped from British politics

At the start of the Great War in 1914, the British establishment prided itself on the nation's armament and munition capacity. Rifles and machine guns may have been contracted in large part to private companies, but it was the Royal Ordnance Factory at Woolwich - the Arsenal - that made the big guns and the shells for the field and garrison artillery and the fleet. Small arms ammo was also made there - as it had been since the innocent cartridges that sparked the Indian Mutiny. The ROF was a sort of Gormenghast, in which three rival departments vied for space, resources and control. The Royal Laboratory made ammunition, the Carriage Department made gun carriages and the Royal Gun Factory made the barrels and tubes. Each had its own Superintendant and arcane system of administration. Should the Mounting Shed, in building 19, where the guns and the carriages were united, belong to the Gun factory or the Carriage Department? Should the Whitehead Torpedo Department come under the control of the Gun Factory or the Royal Laboratory?

Workers at the plant remembered the overtime paid during the Boer War, and no doubt a few looked forward to bulging pay packets in August 1914. But this would prove to be an entirely new form of war; more shells would be fired in one early Western Front battle alone than were used in the entire Boer War. By 1915 the Royal Laboratory had moved to seven day working, three shifts a day. Workers were exhausted - a 96 hour week was more normal than not. New sheds and stores were set up on Plumstead marshes, previously the burying ground for thousands of dead convicts in unmarked burial pits, and firing ranges, but it was not enough. The army in France ran out of shells for the guns.

The failure of government wiped out Asquith's Liberal government and cost the party 236 seats, including those of most of his cabinet. The Party never recovered.

A new Ministry of Munitions quickly set up filling factories across the country, in isolated places, timber huts and sheds thrown up in weeks. Shell-case and fuse making was contracted-out to industry, and girls earned £5 a week pouring molten explosive into the shell cases. It was enough. But the Liberal Party was destroyed for ever.

The anger felt in 1915 against the Liberals by a public unforgiving of their betrayal of our front-line troops - men from almost every family in the country - cannot have been dissimilar to the anger felt today at the Tories. No doubt Asquith imagined his party would take a temporary hit and all would be well afterwards. Clearly he was mistaken.

A naval gun under manufacture in the RGF

Nervous Hague can't hear the approaching tumbrils

Poor William Hague, a deluded and deeply confused Patrician unable to comprehend the events unfolding around him, exposes his deficient cognition in the Telegraph again this morning. Deselecting Remainer Tory MPs is mistaken, he avers. This is the man who gave us both the Patrician Party constitution that robbed local associations of much of their authority and institutionalised control in a weak and narrow metropolitan elite, and who more recently urged Tory MPs to put this same undemocratic and factionalist Party elite before either country or constituency. He still thinks it's all about Brexit.

Dear William, our party is splitting, as is Labour. Politics is re-aligning, Pompey against Caesar. On your side the pompous Patrician elite, the political class, half-a-Parliament of privilege and an immense sense of entitlement, a sort of Social Democrat cross-party consensus defending your grasp on power. On the other, the Gilets jaunes, Caesar's horny handed legions, ready to take back control, to shoulder responsibility, to reform, renew and democratise. Our MPs also sit on both sides of the House.

And because our Party is splitting, and because 70% of party members out in the shires and suburbs support the Leave insurgency, of course they will use whatever little power you have left them to ensure they have as many MPs in the Commons as possible come the next election. Which will not be fought under your current Leader.

Their actions in deselecting Remainers are very much in the interests of our country, wholly in the interests of those constituencies, and greatly to the advantage of our Party, which, purged, renewed and democratised, will once again lead One Nation in the interests of all our people, not only your own narrow privileged elite.

So I'm afraid you must just suck it up.  

Conservative and other political party democracy

The eagle-eyed amongst you may notice a newcomer to the daily blogroll list to the right - the Campaign for Conservative Democracy. John Strafford has been striving ever since Hague imposed his elitist and centralist constitution on the Party in 1998 to reform and democratise the party. He makes a most persuasive case for we, the members of the Party, reclaiming ownership from the Patrician elite and their globalist backers. I won't dwell on the details, which are of little interest to UKIP readers.

However, this fundamental requirement for a party to operate democratically goes to the heart of many issues now assuming importance. My previous tongue-in-cheek reaction to the formation of the 'Brexit' Party was primarily due to a broadly signalled tight central control that would deny its new members effective governance. Its founder is caught in a Catch-22 situation. She wants a new party that can field 'professional, highly competent' candidates and can exclude the Muslim-baiters and the swivel-eyed-loon tendency of UKIP (of whom it must be said there are remarkably few in my experience) and thus is terrified of allowing a one-member-one-vote system. But a party founded without real member democracy must fail; individuals won't donate to a body in which they have no say (the current Tory dilemma) and the party will be dependent on large donations and therefore be vulnerable to corruption and anti-democratic governance.

One of the reforms that I support most strongly is the limiting of individual political donations to somewhere around £50,000. This is vehemently opposed by both Labour and Conservatives; the former relies on Trade Union bungs, the latter on sometimes shady globalist finance. In the absence of large bungs, each party becomes greatly more dependent on its members for both direct funding and fundraising - and each party must in return allow members a real say in the important things.

These matters have been simmering for some years, but have, like so many other issues, now come to the fore because of Brexit. Charles Moore writes in the Telegraph in a manner in which no-one five years ago could ever have imagined; he advocates the firm but fair deselection of all Conservative Remainer MPs, starting with Dominic Grieve. He writes much as many readers write in the blog comments - 

Recently I attended a country funeral. The people in the pew behind me were pointing out the war memorial on the wall. “People shouldn’t forget what those men did,” said one, “They made sure this was a free country”. “It’s not a free country while we’re in this EU,” said another, “We want to go, and now these MPs are trying to stop us”. Some MPs seem slow to pick up this point, and not to realise that they are moving themselves into uncharted territory.

It seems that ensuring party democracy won't wait even for the 29th March. Thus for my party at least, I support fully Mr Strafford's proposals. 

Hague joins Leadership debate

William Hague joins the Conservative leadership debate with a plea not to make Boris Johnson leader by changing the rule book. It is a cri de couer from the deeply establishment ex-leader of a predominantly Remain parliamentary party to an overwhelmingly (and growing) Leave party membership. It also acknowledges unwittingly that party members can force rule changes if the parliamentary party remains unwilling to change; Arron Banks did not pluck the figure of 10,000 new ex-UKIP Conservative members out of the air; it is also the size of petition specified in the party constitution needed to trigger the start of a rule-change process, and I believe a coded warning.

Hague instead asks the party to trust its MPs to make the right choice of Leader.

However, the party Board may hold an easier and quicker answer to changing the process used by the '22 Committee - which opens the possibility of a compromise that may not be the 20-member open ticket, but will not be a process that excludes Boris from the membership ballot.

Given recent choices by the parliamentary party, Hague's plea is a big ask. Hague is also opposed to the involvement of members in 'open primaries' on the basis that the adoption of the process in the US gave America Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton - what he calls 'appalling' choices. Yes, William - but popular. His plea is deeply patrician, wholly establishment and antithetic to change, and will no doubt find favour amongst supporters such as the CBI and the global corporates. I doubt it will find much support amongst a Conservative grass roots membership who may themselves find the actions of many in the parliamentary party equally 'appalling'.

Robbins No.2, Jonathan Black, in power stance, selling the Robbins Plan to Cabinet members

PUSHBACK

The launch by Leave Means Leave of a concerted campaign to regain control of Brexit marks a turning point in the August Stasis. The Telegraph published an opening salvo from founders Richard Tice and John Longworth yesterday, and today Nigel Farage fires off a broadside from the same broadsheet. We're not being asked to do anything as yet except signify support or donate - http://www.leavemeansleave.eu - but I guess up to 18 million voters are ready for some Brexit leadership, sadly absent from the Parliamentary Conservative Party. John Vasc explained succinctly the dilemna in a previous comment and I hope he will forgive me for quoting him here;

The Party rules on a new leadership election virtually guarantee that two Remainers would be selected by the current parliamentary party of majority remainer MPs, to be duly 'offered' as a 'choice' to the angry (majority pro-brexit) party members. Javid and Hunt, for example.

This balance would only change if a General Election were to sweep away some of the remainer MPs from their leaver constituencies - but the party is controlled by May and Lewis, so de-selection and replacement is unlikely to happen, and votes will then go to Ukip, which will lead to a Labour victory. 

The ERG know all this - it's a Gordian knot that cannot be untied - or even cut through.

And this leads us to the next stage. Taking back our party. 

The Conservative Party was the last party of which I was a member. Our club in Ipswich had a decent and well used bar and  a full-sized snooker table dominated by a monochrome print of Churchill. I was amongst a million or so members who left the party between 1979 and 1997 - in my case in the early 80s. It wasn't by any means a protest, but the blessed Margaret, for all her fine qualities, was also a ruthless centraliser who robbed Conservative local government and local associations of much of their purpose. So we left in droves. 

Well, I have now rejoined. That little biographical box heading the right column must be edited. Mrs May and Mr Lewis will be pleased to hear that I am back - and determined to join with my fellow Conservatives in regaining control of not only our Party but also our nation. 

Have a good weekend, all.