Home What's New Speeches & Articles Newsletter - Apr 2008 Biography Diary Contact Information Photo Album Parliamentary Highlights Publications Links MEPs' Transparency   Conservative Party Latest News from Conservatives.com Conservative Party Website
		Anything but Europe The Guardian - May 11 2004 The East Midlands Tory Euro-campaign got off to a brisk start yesterday in Lincoln, where regional journalists met our six European candidates, along with elected MPs and councillors supported by a team of young activists. The campaign T-shirts with a "JUST TICK TORY" logo were much in evidence, and appreciated by the photographers. We have two main campaign themes: "Let down by Labour", focusing on the government's policy failures both in the UK and in Europe, and "Put Britain first". We don't share Labour's pathetic ambition to "be at the heart of Europe", regardless of the cost to British prosperity and democracy. We have an entirely different vision - of a Europe of free, democratic, independent nation states, trading and cooperating together. As I talk to voters on the doorstep, I find our vision of Europe is overwhelmingly preferred. Unlike his party, at least Labour MEP Richard Corbett mentions European issues in his first piece. Labour seems to have two main campaign themes -- attacking Michael Howard, and (bizarrely!) talking up their appalling record on public services. Anything but Europe. Like the Lib Dems, they know that their EU policies are unpopular, even with many of their own supporters. Corbett suspects that we Tories "are up to our old tricks ... complaining that the EU is on the way to a super-state". What else to you call a polity which is planned to have a constitution, a legal personality, a president, a foreign minister, a parliament, a currency, a central bank, common policies on just about everything including foreign policy and defence, a flag, an anthem and a passport, and whose laws explicitly take precedence over those of its components? As Michael Howard says, countries have constitutions, associations of countries have treaties. Few people in Britain want to be part of a country called Europe. And the Lib Dems' main Euro-campaign theme is ... Iraq! I think I may have to send Charles Kennedy and Tony Blair an atlas. Britain is not "at the heart of Europe", and neither is Iraq! Tuesday dawns. Today, Leicestershire.