Explosive Tory clashes over EU tactics
Jonathan Lindsell, 21 October 2013
Most of the public hadn’t heard of Adam Afriyie until this month’s Question Time appearance. A self-made millionaire raised by a single mother in South London, the Windsor MP is rumoured to have leadership ambitions and is tipped as the ‘Tory Obama’. He is championing an amendment to James Wharton’s Private Member’s Bill promising an EU referendum in the next parliament: Afriyie wants it brought forward to 23 October 2014, a year away.
On 10 October, however, 140 of the 147 Tories elected in 2010 wrote to Adam begging him to drop the amendment. This was followed by a charm offensive from the entrepreneur, who tried to calm the party with a conciliatory open letter and several tea meetings, which he called ‘constructive’.
However, he’s at odds with the Maastricht-rebel ‘old guard’ too: reportedly Bernard Jenkin, Bill Cash, or Edward Leigh called him a ‘Muppet’. Nicholas Soames, former Defence Minister (1994-1997) and grandson of Winston Churchill, went several steps further in a ‘barrack room language’ tirade against Afriyie in the Commons tea-room, of which “disgrace to your party”, “totally…disloyal” and “vanity project” are the more publishable remarks.
Realistically, with silent opposition from the Conservative leadership, this amendment has minimal support, so it’s hard to see why passions are running so high. Are backbenchers showing (surprising) loyalty to Cameron, genuine support for the ‘wait and renegotiate’ strategy, or squeamishness at the prospect of actually holding a referendum? At the same time, how can Afriyie’s actions be construed as a leadership bid if it alienates three large segments of his party?
On the other hand, Afriyie points out that 55% of the public support a 2014 referendum [Survation Poll]. In his open letter he notes, “Laws we write in this parliament do not bind the next government…Wharton’s Bill simply cannot guarantee a referendum.” Perhaps he fears renegotiation would be little more than a tactic for stalling and confusing the British public, as suggested in Civitas research into Harold Wilson’s 1975 misdirection. He is, martyr-like, following a real belief in Britain’s best interests and leaving leadership manoeuvring to Jesse Norman, Osborne, May and Johnson.
Norman’s chances seem ruined after demotion following his rebellion over Syria. Boris is in fine form though – he widened the Tory split in the Sunday Telegraph, contradicting Douglas Carswell’s misleading benefit tourism claims and belittling ‘Little Englander’ concerns. He paid lip-service to the party line, but raised amusing data that 10,000 Brits are claiming generous benefits in Germany. He concluded: “We’re the biggest load of b****y foreigners on earth.”
So what can we expect on 8 November? Given that Wharton’s bill may simply be a PR exercise to show potential ‘Kippers’ (UKIP ‘Tories’) that Cameron is tough on Europe, it’s insignificant. Without Liberal Democrat support Wharton’s bill will surely fail, so this in-fighting only matters in terms of internal Conservative power dynamic, not how it might affect 500 million people. Its fall-out, however, could decide the next election.