He observed that despite all the highly public ‘disagreements’ and arguments between the Tory ‘opposition’ (I use this term very loosely) and the Labour Government over the number of helicopters in service or the appointment of Sir Richard Dannatt as a political adviser, the two parties have practically identical policies on Afghanistan.

And it is true. The Conservatives, on this issue among so many others, have very little to say about Afghanistan or Iraq that radically differs from what is currently on offer. Both parties, save an honourable few among their ranks, enthusiastically endorsed the war by voting for it. Neither has altered their stance since.

Eight years later, some among those many who voted for the war are beginning to reconsider their position. Many more already have. After nearly a decade we have had ample time to survey the scene, to agonise over the many needless deaths and to debate the ins and outs of why we are still there. Indeed, The Times notes that opinion continues to swing towards withdrawal.

One must have concluded by now, as many did long before the invasion, that it was a bad idea to invade Afghanistan in the first place. Many have tried before and all have failed. The war was borne out of opportunity and mistaken idealism that imposing democracy was a simple matter rather than a process that takes time, experience and many generations.

Our presence in Afghanistan, like Iraq, does us no favours. It is high time that we left; high time that we got out of Afghanistan.

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.

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.

The FT article briefly notes that Cameron wishes to cut the size of the Commons by at least ten per cent, which in real terms would account for around sixty MPs and could lead to the axing of a number of safe Labour seats.

In spite of the supposed independence of the Boundaries and Electoral Commissions, as Zehra Zaidi rightly remarks, Labour has helped create a substantial imbalance within the system over the past ten years – which of course has been to their benefit.

Therefore, as all political parties that obtain power attempt, in some way or other, to use the system to garner electoral benefits, it’s not that surprising that the Conservatives have now said they will try to rebalance the system if elected.

However, these proposals also come after a notable increase in the number of reports over previous years highlighting the decreasing legislative workload of MPs. For example, The Daily Telegraph noted back in October 2007 that:

MPs may be given an extra 12 days holiday over the next year after the Government ran out of legislation to put before Parliament.

In the Financial Times, David Cameron is also quoted as having said that in his efforts to cut public spending he thought:

The House of Commons could do the job that it does with 10 per cent fewer MPs without any trouble at all.

Back in 2007, when The Telegraph originally covered the increase of holidays for MPs the Chief Executive of the Taxpayer’s Alliance, Matthew Elliott was quick to wade in and comment, saying:

A three-month holiday for MPs is a ridiculous luxury, especially since the politicians have also been awarding themselves larger pensions and higher pay. But having MPs sitting in Parliament for shorter periods may at least mean fewer new taxes and regulations.

The question we should really be asking ourselves though is why our MPs have so little to do, and why it is that David Cameron could possibly propose to do away with ten percent of them and still maintain the same level of output?

Well, you don’t have to look far to discover the answer. With approximately eighty percent of our legislation originating in Brussels, our Westminster Parliament has simply become a rubber stamping institute through which EU law passes without amendment or debate. Then there are EU Regulations which are decided on in Brussels and don’t even have to pass through our Parliament to be enacted.

This is why the comment by Matthew Elliott is so ridiculous. It doesn’t really matter for how long our own MPs sit in Parliament or how many of them there are these days, the volume of legislation coming from the EU, which we cannot prevent, will arrive and be passed into our law regardless.

There are alternatives of course. Back in June of last year, Conservative MP Peter Lilley proposed that all MPs should have their pay cut if they gave away powers to the European Union. Such a system might actually bring home to MPs the importance of the powers and responsibilities that have been entrusted to them by the British people.

Then there is our direct financial contribution to the European Union which amounts to roughly some £14bn an annum – far greater if you take into account the costs that EU legislation and regulations impose on us. Therefore, the costs saved from leaving the European Union would far outweigh the comparably insignificant sum of money Mr Cameron would supposedly like to save in reducing the number of Members of Parliament.

Sadly though, it appears that once again Mr Cameron has chosen to tackle the symptom rather than the cause of the problem in our Parliamentary system.

Tim Montgomerie, in a piece entitled ‘Ken Clarke: Tories will get more pro-European in office’, has highlighted a few interesting comments made by Mr Clarke at a recent conference:

I think the need to be working with Obama will influence my party on Europe. It is still firmly Eurosceptic but it’s now moderate, harmless Eurosceptism. It’s a bit silly sometimes, like which group do you join in the European parliament, but full-blooded stuff like renegotiating the treaty of accession is as dead as a dodo. We’ve got lots of ideas on European policy on energy, security, relations with Russia, climate change, all that kind of thing [but] somebody like me is far more relaxed about all that [and if the Tories] get into office the pressure of the American alliance will make them more European.

Now, let us be reminded of what Mr Peter Hitchens perceptively observed about euroscepticism:

The word ‘Eurosceptic’ means ‘a person who adopts anti-EU rhetoric in opposition, and then surrenders to the EU in government’. This is inevitable. You cannot be in the EU and not run by it, any more than you can be a little bit pregnant. If you don’t like being run by it, you must leave, as all serious students of the subject long ago realised.

Ken Clarke and Peter Hitchens will be proven right, in time. I also suppose this just confirms what I was saying yesterday really, doesn’t it?

We know well that Mr Clarke is quite stringent in his pro-EU views. (Incidentally, at least they are principled, even if I disagree with them, which is better than can be said of many other MPs and young wannabes that spring to mind). We also know that he took to the stage with Michael Heseltine, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in 1997 to promote the Euro currency, and we know very well that he has been critical of David Cameron during his tenure as Conservative leader.

But, really, does any of this actually matter? Why is so much being made of Mr Clarke’s views on the European Union? What cause for disagreement, beyond rhetoric (which is so often meaningless these days), have Mr Clarke and Mr Cameron had so far? There is only a promise to take Conservative MEPs out the EPP-ED, which mysteriously failed to materialise, and a grudging commitment for a post ratification referendum on the Lisbon Treaty – but only if the General Election is held early, which it won’t be – that stands between them.

In fact, one wonders whether the Conservative party even has a policy on Britain’s relationship with the European Union which Mr Clarke could speak out against and break. I can’t think of one.

So, far from causing in-fighting within the parliamentary party, Ken Clarke’s re-emergence from the cold will simply mark another day of business as usual in the life of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition. Under Cameron’s leadership the anti-EU cause has not been furthered – there’s little chance that it will be.

Euroscepticism doesn’t mean anything anymore anyway – it is simply a phrase used by those in opposition who adopt anti-EU rhetoric, but when in government willingly surrender to the EU. It is inevitable. But then sadly I think we knew that already.

In her third post entitled ‘A mace-wielding stand for democracy?’ she alludes to the increasingly undemocratic system in Britain over which, domestically at least, our Labour Government presides, and how she has had direct experience of the electorate losing faith with the political system.

In her article Charlotte decides to pick up on the quangocracy that our largely useless, Labour-led Westminster administration has helped create, saying:

Under New Labour, the ‘machine’ of politics has ballooned, and it has meant that it has become more and more difficult for the public to influence what goes on in politics.

While it is true that the Labour Government have dramatically increased spending and employment in public services and state institutions, and handed over political power to unaccountable quangos, this current state of affairs cannot be entirely attributed to the Labour party. British political history did not begin in 1997.

For example, it was under the Conservative party that local government was reorganised and ‘reformed’ in 1973 and vast powers were taken away from democratically elected councillors and given to an immense array of unelected and often unaccountable chief executives and town hall bureaucrats.

It was also under the Conservatives that this country was taken into the European Economic Community, which later developed into the European Union – an organisation that has become one of the greatest threats to liberty and democracy facing Britain since the Second World War.

What’s more, previous Conservative Governments, including those of Margaret Thatcher and John Major did very little to decrease the size of the civil service or the state, and more often than not allowed it to continue expanding.

Still, despite not choosing to acknowledge these points in her article, Charlotte moves on to make an observation of interest, commenting that:

Labour have built a quangocracy of unelected bodies which rule our communities and make decisions for us, and in silent and stealthy ways, parliamentary procedure has been tweaked and changed to dis-empower the democratic parliament and empower the Government.

Now, exchange the word ‘Labour’ for ‘the EU and previous Labour and Conservative administrations’ and you have a far more accurate description of what has really been taking place in Britain and Europe over the past three decades.

So, when Charlotte ends her article by remarking that the only way politicians can begin to restore the faith lost in our political system is by being prepared to speak out and act, then I suggest that now is as good a time as any for the Conservative party to do just that.

David Cameron really needs to stop fiddling around at the edges of the debate and instead speak out strongly against the malign influence the European Union’s undemocratic institutions have over our system of government and the British people. He and the likes of Charlotte Leslie need to acknowledge these facts and promise that if they formed a government they would restore local accountability, sovereignty and parliamentary democracy – not just abolish a few quangos and hope that is enough.

There are literally millions of people out there yearning for the Conservatives to make such a bold statement of intent – but despite that, (and you may call me a cynic) I somehow don’t see them being made any time soon.

One such friend of mine claims that John Redwood would privately like the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. Now, I can’t say I agree with my friend that John Redwood is secretly in favour of leaving the European Union.

If John Redwood was really so much in favour of the UK leaving the EU then he would have said something about it by now – but surprise, surprise he hasn’t.

Rightly or wrongly (and I would argue that it is probably wrongly), John Redwood is still held with some regard by Conservative party activists and lesser backbench MPs. If John Redwood were, for example, to sign the Better Off Out campaign pledge (okay, David Cameron has banned all Conservative MPs from doing so, but he could still be defiant) then many other Conservative MPs and activists would look at his actions and think that, well, if John Redwood has done something like that then so can I. The number of signatures to Better Off Out would surely increase.

Dr Helen Szamuely of the Bruges Group seems to have a similar opinion of John Redwood:

The great advantage of Redwood becoming Shadow Chancellor would be not his supposed euroscepticism, which, like most Tory euroscepticism, is worth considerably less than Neville Chamberlain’s infamous ‘piece of paper’, but the fact that, according to his own interminable stories, he knows how the European Union operates.

This means that when Mr Redwood assures us that a Conservative government will do such things, all of which happen to be EU competence, not only we shall know he is lying, we shall also be able to assume that he knows he is lying, something one can never be quite certain of with the rest of the Tories.

If John Redwood really knew what the EU was like and about and cared about leaving the EU then he would have made a public statement about his beliefs by now. But as I said, he hasn’t – and frankly I don’t think he will. He cares too much about his career as a Conservative MP and nothing that I can see will change that.

* This article has been edited since it was originally published on the 23rd October, 2008. I was asked by someone to remove certain comments regarding what was believed to have been said privately between two individuals.

However, the point about John Redwood (and anyone else for that matter) being utterly deluded in believing that we could fundamentally renegotiate our position within the EU still stands.