Tim Montgomerie on the Conservative Membership
Tim Montgomerie has just tweeted this extract from a piece he has in The Times tomorrow.
However irritating I sometimes find it that much of the media goes to someone who has resigned from the Conservative party when they want a commentator to speak about the Tory grassroots, I will admit that I think this assessment is spot on.
However irritating I sometimes find it that much of the media goes to someone who has resigned from the Conservative party when they want a commentator to speak about the Tory grassroots, I will admit that I think this assessment is spot on.
Comments
Yes a lot of natural "conservatives" did leave, some of us went our own way as I did, and found other better things to do, some went to UKIP and then found us later once they discovered what UKIP was, its the Nigel show.
Winning does not seem to matter to the conservatives, they have failed to win any majority since 1992 until the last election, which came about by accident because DC offered a referendum, thinking he would never have to deliver it, due to coalition.
You speak to previous members, and most now call it the "not the conservative party"
I just find this analysis completely wrong, guess that is just my own opinion though, and others of course, as always are entitled to express theirs.
"The blame for this lies squarely with David Cameron for offering this daft referendum, which no one wanted, in the first place"
I laughed so hard at that one, being wrong on so many levels, I almost crashed my Honda.
According to their worldview there was no need for a referendum because hardly anyone cares about Europe and it was all a matter of party management by David Cameron which went horribly wrong.
I don't share that view. A party committed to leaving the EU had won a national election (the 2013 Euros). The proportion of the electorate who wanted to leave was large enough and noisy enough that it was not safe for democracy to just ignore them. Sooner or later there would have been a referendum on the issue.
The turnout in the referendum, and the result, rather makes a nonsense of the idea that nobody wanted it.