Tag Archives: Conservatives

Tories seem to have found someone even more barking than Roger Helmer

Today’s good news: Roger Helmer is standing down as a Member of the European Parliament. He says its because he disagrees with nine-tenths of Tory policy, and his statements have become more and more shrill and reactionary over the years.

In the list-based election system used in the UK, it’s the next person on the East Midlands list for the Tories that gets the seat, and this is none other than Rupert Matthews, a man who seems to be even more barking than Helmer is.

You thought that was impossible? Try this for starters – the homepage of his website:

Click on the ‘Speaking’ page and you are presented with a series of topics on which Matthews can enlighten you, including:

Your Local Ghosts – What real ghosts are like – a talk adapted to your local area.

Medieval Women – How women led society in the world of chivalry.

Yeti! – Are the legendary man-apes of the world real?

The Biography of Father Christmas – A great seasonal favourite for December.

This is a man who compares the EU to the USSR on ConservativeHome, and – among the 150 books he claims to have authored – the summary of Can Britain leave the EU? A Warning from History states “We might yet see the panzers in Parliament Square”. The things he posts on Twitter are equally bizarre.

So much for the modern, presentable, compassionate Conservative Party!

[UPDATE - 1540] Andy Carling at New Europe has looked into Matthews’s ghost hunting exploits

NOTE: contrary to the impression given in this article, Roger Helmer stays as a MEP until the end of 2011. Rupert Matthews takes over after that.

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Lazy Daniel Hannan MEP

I suppose drafting polemics takes time, or perhaps there is another reason for his deficiency. For Daniel Hannan MEP, European poster boy for the Tory right, seems increasingly to be neglecting the very work he is supposed to be doing – representing his constituents from South East England in the European Parliament, and playing his role as a legislator in the EU’s parliament.

First there are the records of meetings between lobbyists and Conservative members of the European Parliament, published for the period 1 January until 30 June 2010 [PDF here]. Hannan is one of only 2 MEPs (together with Robert Atkins) who states zero meetings with lobbyists. Continue reading →

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Tories in the EP favouring symbolism over influence

So David Cameron is finally starting to make good his pledge to take the Conservatives out of the European People’s Party in the European Parliament, as covered by the FT Brussels blog, Richard Corbett and Iain Dale. There’s of course a lot of bluster about the whole thing, and plenty of inaccuracies too. Here’s an effort to set things straight.

Firstly, the Conservatives are part of the EPP-ED Group in the European Parliament, and they will leave this group. The Conservatives are part of the ED (European Democrats) adjunct to the group, meaning that where the EPP and Tory manifestoes diverged at the 2004 elections the Tories are not obliged to follow the complete group line; in practice the Tories vote with the EPP on 80-90% of legislation currently.

The Conservatives are not part of the European People’s Party so they would not be bound by a common manifesto for the EP elections as agreed by the EPP party. So strictly speaking the Tories are leaving the EPP-ED Group in the European Parliament, not leaving the EPP. This may sound like a technicality but in Brussels it’s rather significant as the size of a group (not a party) determines the allocation of the important jobs in the European Parliament, and the degree to which the Tories are bound by EPP policies has been over-stated.

This leads us on to what the Conservatives will lose by leaving the EPP-ED. All the juicy jobs in the EP – President, Vice Presidents, Committee Chairs, Rapporteurs – are dished out according to the size of a political group. UK Tory Neil Parrish is currently Chair of the Agriculture Committee – he only has this job because the Tories are part of the EPP-ED. Essentially by leaving the EPP-ED the Tories would limit their ability to influence legislation in the EP as the positions of influence would be allocated to other centre-right MEPs.

Cameron of course intends to create a new political group as a replacement for the EPP-ED. This needs 25 MEPs from 7 Member States (not 6 as has been widely reported – those are the old rules), and there is a complete lack of parties in other European countries that believe in the same sorts of things that the Tories do. ODS from the Czech Republic are cited as the most likely allies, but its leader Topolanek says the party has not ruled out the possibility of staying in the EPP. The party’s founder, Vaclav Klaus (President of the Czech Republic) is a climate change denier – does that fit Cameron’s environmental policies?

Other possible Tory allies are even more unsavoury – Law & Justice (PiS) from Poland, the party of the Kaczyński twins, has a questionable record on issues such as gay rights and statements about the death penalty. Lega Nord and the Dansk Folkeparti are even more unsavioury. LabourList is even tougher on this, but they get their facts wrong – ODS are in the EPP-ED currently, while PiS, Lega Nord and Dansk Folkeparti are all members of the UEN Group in the EP, a group that is essentially nastier and more conservative than the EPP-ED.

So is it better for Cameron to team up with a bunch of weird traditionalists and regionalists in the EP, or keep his MEPs in isolation in Brussels? On balance he should probably do the latter if – as seems obvious – he cares only about presentation in London rather than about influence in Brussels. MEPs without a group can speak and can vote, but cannot become committee chairs and are highly unlikely to be rapporteurs.

Essentially this is a battle between symbolism and influence, and symbolism looks to have triumphed.

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