Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Fight, fight

Weird email came to me today relating to a scrap in Eurosceptic circles. It was a leaked letter from Roger Helmer to the Mail on Sunday where Peter Hitchens had written this,
The Tories and a shameless Euro lie
At last the fake row about a referendum on the EU Constitution is over, and we will stop having to listen to the Tory Party's phoney cries of rage about a treaty it would have signed without fuss had it been in office.
The Conservative pretence of hostility to the EU is one of the most shameless lies in politics. They have always been the most EU-friendly party, and adopted meaningless "Euro-scepticism" only when people realised what the EU really meant.
Which pretty well sums up my own opinion. Roger responds thus,
From ROGER HELMER MEP

Dear Peter,

As a lifelong Conservative who has spent the last year (and a great deal of money) campaigning for a referendum on the Renamed EU Constitution (aka the Lisbon Treaty), I was a bit discouraged by your reference on Sunday to "phoney cries of rage about a treaty it (the Conservative Party) would have signed anyway".

I am certainly not about to defend the record of Heath or Major with regard to the EU, but that's no basis to question our commitment today. Both the Party leadership and the grass roots are passionately opposed to further EU integration, and committed to rolling back at least some of the worst of it when we form a government.

In a sense you actually answer your own point. We have adopted scepticism, you say, "only when people realised what the EU really meant". OK. But the people have realised, and the Party has realised, and we are taking a clear and principled
line. If I thought your criticism contained a shred of truth, I should not be sitting (nor standing again next year) as a Conservative.

It would be good if those of us who oppose the EU project could start attacking the
real enemy, and stop attacking each other.

Best regards.

ROGER HELMER MEP
Well Roger may well be right when he talks about this sort of stuff, especially about himself, but he must know that he does not speak for the leadership of his party. Particularly when seen in the light of the whip's response to the Cash Amendment in Westminster.

Even odder is that this leak came from the desk of Richard Corbett.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah well, that's OK then. Never mind that the head of the Tory group in the EP appears to be a committed Fedralist.

If the Tories want my vote in the European election they are going to have to clean out the stables first.

Anonymous said...

In any case, vote YES at www.FreeEurope.info

ENGLISHMAN said...

More tripe!If the cons are so committed to a referendum,and so anti eu,why did five of thier number vote no to a referendum in brussels,the fact is that the cons were so desperate not to win or have any effect upon proceedings in westminster,in order to argue at a later date that no blame can attach to them for this treason,but we all know that it does.

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