Douglas Carswell

A Conservative manifesto would need to be Euro compliant

Slowly we are getting there. Bit by bit the Conservative Party is nudging its way closer to calling for Britain to leave the EU.

That might not yet be the official line, but a certain inexorable logic is driving us towards a tipping point. More and more Conservatives are starting to realise that we simply cannot achieve the kind of changes that we want and remain members of the European Union on current terms.

With just over a year to go until the General Election, one or two minds in Westminster have started to turn to the manifesto. What sort of things might we put in it? What might a future Conservative government seek to do?

Perhaps we fancy some long overdue reform of the energy market, allowing lower prices and proper competition. We'd need EU approval first.

Maybe we'd want to adopt the sort of sensible, balanced immigration system they have in Australia? Not even last week's modest amendments to the Immigration Bill would be acceptable to the Euro system.

What about closer trade ties with Asia, Africa and those parts of the planet where the growth is? Brussels decides. Less regulation? Ditto.

We cannot even promise that we would not give prisoners the vote without permission from the Euro judges.

It is not just that being part of the Euro system makes it harder to see how a Conservative administration might implement a Conservative programme in government. Being in the EU makes it harder to persuade the voter that a future Conservative administration will implement a coherently Conservative programme in government.

How might a centre-Right, free-market group of MPs in Westminster deliver a centre-Right, free-market government when most public policy choices are made for us by a remote corporatist clique in Brussels? Perhaps the voter has clocked this....

Perhaps the real reason why the Europe question has bedevilled the Conservative party for years is not because of any determination on the part of supposedly swivel-eyed Eurosceptics. It is because we are in the EU, and being in the EU turns out to be ultimately incompatible with a properly Conservative administration. Far from being reconciled to the idea of EU membership, more and more Conservatives have begun to wake up to its implications. More did so last week.

Once most have, it is game over. Or rather game outer.

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