Bagshawe To The Rescue
Louise Bagshawe is the adopted Conservative Parliamentary candidate for Corby, and also writes a regular weekly cheerleading column for the party leadership on ConservativeHome.
In her latest article, Louise attempts to give readers ten ‘good’ reasons to vote Conservative at the next General Election. Unfortunately, she makes a few glaring mistakes in the process.
Firstly, the very fact that most people who read ConservativeHome are already Conservative party members or voters makes you wonder why she has chosen to write a piece extolling the supposed virtues of Cameron’s ideas and urging members to vote Conservative – unless she and the leadership believe that support among it’s own members needs firming up? Either that of course, or she just had nothing more interesting to write about.
The article is, in places, frankly hilarious – or at least it would be if Ms Bagshawe were not such a high-ranking party candidate with very close connections to the party’s hierarchy and leadership. She could also easily be the next Member of Parliament for Corby.
For example, when remarking upon the Conservative’s ‘Vote Blue, Go Green’ drive, where David Cameron has said a Conservative government will increases taxes on airlines and pollutants, she writes, ‘Yes, I used to be a sceptic on climate change. Then I went out into my garden last Christmas and my rosebush was in bud. I’m not a sceptic now’. Eh?
There are also plenty of vague references made to repatriating powers from the European Union, scrapping the European Human Rights act and demanding a referendum on the EU Constitution – most of which are unachievable (or David Cameron has not promised) because the EU simply wouldn’t allow treaties and agreements to be renegotiated at detriment to the European project.
What’s more, even if there is an election in October and the Conservatives win, and the EU Constitution has already been ratified by Labour and Parliament, the Conservatives will be very unlikely to repeal it, since the party is largely run by people who have a vested interest in maintaining that status quo.
If however, the Constitution has yet to be ratified, and the party wins the election, the Conservatives will encounter an enormous political problem. If they offer the country a referendum as they promised, and a vote against the EU Constitution is returned as is likely, then what? Britain will be the only country in Europe not to have ratified the treaty – the sole obstacle to ‘progress’.
My guess is that in that instance the party would attempt to instead trumpet the suggestions that Europhile Conservative MEP, Timothy Kirkhope made in his alternative treaty document a while back, claiming the recommendations were some kind of viable alternative to the Treaty. However, as we know, Kirkhope’s document is little more than wishful thinking and would demonstrate that in reality, the party did not wish in any way to deviate from further, thought slightly slower, European integration.
On a side note, something which has occurred to me in the past is that the EU is prepared to tolerate marginal anti-EU parties such as UKIP because they have no chance of forming a national government. The Conservatives on the other hand have far more realistic prospects and therefore can be constituted as a more serious threat by the European Union institutes. Should a British political party ever announce that one of its policies was to leave the EU, then I suspect that the proponents of ‘ever closer union’ would do everything in their power to prevent that British party forming a government.
Back to Louise Bagshawe though, she also makes the mistake of saying ‘we will abolish inheritance tax’, and for doing so is later taken to task by an anonymous commenter on the party’s promises for tax cuts (or rather overall lack of them) in the comments section of the same article. There, Louise only succeeds in getting herself into a real pickle by confusing the party’s policy aspirations with firm political promises.
Ms Bagshawe is a pleasant woman, and could probably give a coherent, well reasoned argument if she tried. So come on Louise; don’t try to pull the wool over our eyes. Tell it how it is, not how you want it to be.
