You Can’t Do That

The Shadow Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, has today reaffirmed the Conservative pledge to abolish Home Information packs if the party forms an administration after the next General Election.

The promise by the Conservatives is, however, not worth the manifesto paper it will likely be printed on. This is because it is practically impossible for any UK Government to abolish Home Information Packs because they have been inflicted upon us by our continued membership of the European Union.

One need only refer to Directive 2002/91/EC which explains the certification of homes and building energy efficiency levels. The Directive came into full force on the 4th of January 2003 when it was published in the Official Journal of the European Communities and all member states (including Britain) had to comply with the legislation by the 4th of January 2006.

The deadline of full compliance has of course long since past. We must, by European law (which now takes precedent), certificate all our buildings and homes regardless of whether we wish to or not – all in the name of tackling ‘Global Warming’. We cannot escape from doing so, and while the Conservatives may try to change the name of the Home Information packs to something else, the energy certification which is the essence of the packs must be retained.

While David Cameron would like to keep quiet about ‘Europe’ (by which presumably he means the EU), as Daniel Hannan noted yesterday:

Almost all the things that really annoy people come from Brussels – home information packs, fortnightly bin collections, metric measures, compulsory car seats, all stem from EU directives.

Thus, in most instances you cannot honestly discuss domestic issues in Britain without considering European Union legislation and regulation. This becomes more apparent to people by the day, but still Mr Cameron, the Conservative Party and much of the media refuse to acknowledge the giant EU elephant in the room.

Credit Where It Is Due

I have not recently had much good to say about ConservativeHome and its founding Editor, Tim Montgomerie. I did disagree with his views on comments made by Lord Tebbit who urged voters to withdraw their support for the main parties.

I have also increasingly disliked the way in which ConservativeHome has become almost completely sycophantic towards the Conservative Party and its leadership, rather than remaining a home for conservative opinion that is independent of the political party as was originally the website’s core aim.

However, today Tim has made the right decision. He announced that he applied to join the Freedom Association’s Better Off Out campaign and stated unequivocally that he believes that Britain must leave the European Union. This is a view with which I fully and wholeheartedly agree – and which I’m glad Tim now shares.

Leaving the European Union is but a stepping stone towards the re-establishment of our national sovereignty, our Parliamentary democracy, and the implementation of the absolutely necessary conservative reforms that our society so desperately requires.

Yet, this is not the view of the Conservative Party, nor do I think it may ever be. The party has become too wrapped up with the desires of the liberal political class and national media, and far too interested in the pursuit of office for its own sake to take action over the detrimental nature and rule of ever closer union.

If Tim really believes that Britain should leave the European Union then he will eventually discover, as I have, that the Conservative Party is not the vehicle through which that will be achieved.

We Seem To Have Been Here Before

During the afternoon on Sunday, Tim Montgomerie extolled the supposed virtues of voting for the Conservatives in the local and European elections in less than a month, on the 4th of June.

He disagreed with Lord Tebbit, Peter Hitchens and that anarchical prat, Paul Staines who called for the electorate to ditch their support for the main political parties as a means of registering their disgust and disapproval over MPs handling of our country and parliamentary expenses.

Conversely, Tim claimed that a large victory for the Conservative Party would accelerate momentum towards the end of the Blair and Brown years. He also commented that Cameron had acted decisively and with resolution over the MPs expenses scandal, and that the formation of a new Conservative-led coalition in the European Parliament would act as a serious opposition.

The other few reasons he gave amounted to little more than a ‘vote for us because the rest are worse’ – and there really is little merit in that line of persuasion. In fact, let us be honest, there really was little in the way of merit in any of his arguments at all.

For example, how exactly will a large vote for the Conservative Party at the European and local elections hasten the end of the Brown and Blair years? Since David Cameron, the self-proclaimed ‘Heir to Blair’, and the Conservative Party are pursuing policies that are virtually identical to that of New Labour, how is voting Conservative meant to be end the Brown and Blair years when politically they seek to continue them in terms of policy?

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Cracks Appear In The Facade

There was an extraordinary intervention by Lord Tebbit in the Daily Mail on Monday, repeated again by the Peer on Tuesday on the BBC’s Today programme and then later that day in a televised interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson.

Lord Tebbit called for the electorate to withdraw their votes from the three main political parties at the European elections in June in order to send a message to those parties that their votes should not be taken for granted. He wrote:

Local elections, the great British public should treat just as normal but at the European elections, in my judgment they should send a very sharp message to the leaders of the three national parties by not voting for any of the national party candidates.

He went on to add in later interviews that the electorate should steer clear of voting for the socialist and racialist BNP, but other than that he did not mind who people voted for (or not at all), just that they didn’t vote Lib Dem, Labour or Conservative.

Even less than a decade ago this story would have caused a media storm. There would have been multiple front page news headlines detailing ‘furious’ Conservative splits over ‘Europe’ and the culturally leftist BBC would have had a field day.

Things though have since moved on. The Conservatives are still irrevocably split over the European Union, but the official media and political narrative has changed. Today’s official line is David Cameron good; Gordon Brown bad. In order to facilitate a change of Government, or rather Westminster administration, the media, having failed to make David Cameron popular, are now trying the other option which is to make Gordon Brown unpopular.

Therefore, any stories that might portray Cameron in a negative light are now willingly suppressed by the media. How else could one account for the complete lack of coverage over Lord Tebbit’s intervention, especially by the BBC, and the establishment papers of the Times and the Guardian?

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