Why Brexiteers should vote Conservative today

It has been a long campaign. I began pounding pavements for the local elections back in January, the pace picked up in late March and reached a peak in the final week of April and first week of May. After those disappointing results (albeit with some bright glimmers of success), there was a short lull before the European Election campaign got under way.

I’m not going to pretend that this has been easy. Having doors slammed in your face and being sworn at in the street is not pleasant. But the campaign has been instructive. Those folks willing to talk to a chap wearing a blue rosette have been pretty consistent in what they have been telling me. Clearly this election is all about Brexit. We politicians may want to talk about policing, trade policies, wildlife conservation, transport or any of a dozen other issues – but nobody else does.

Those voters who still want to stay in the EU and so ignore the referendum result – and they are a dwindling (if noisy) tribe – tell me that they are voting Green or Lib Dem, and some are going Labour. Meanwhile, many of those who want to leave the EU, or respect the referendum result, or just get on with their lives, are voting for the Brexit Party.

This is all perfectly understandable. But, I think, flawed. There are still reasons to vote Conservative and I would urge you, dear reader, to do so.

First, I must say that me keeping my job as an MEP is not one of them. I wanted to be made redundant on 29th March and did everything that I could to make that happen. Nor will I ask you to vote Conservative to support the current Withdrawal Agreement. It is a bad deal and, as I have said many times since I first read it, a no-deal Brexit would be preferable – though not as good as a workable fair trade deal.

No. I am going to ask you to Vote Conservative to save both Brexit and the principles for which the Conservative Party has always stood.

The brutal fact remains that the Conservative Party, with DUP support, forms the Government. And only the Government can deliver Brexit. Of course, the MPs who promised to implement the referendum result should do so, and their refusal is a national disgrace. But those recalcitrant Remainers are refusing to listen to the public – and they should be punished at the next general election.

And that is the point. The more damage done to the Conservative Party now, the less chance there is of the Conservatives winning the next general election. Some of you may hope that the Brexit Party will do so. But even if they are destined for greatness, it is most likely to take two or three general elections to get Nigel Farage into No.10. And, of course, we have no idea what their domestic policies might turn out to be: Free market? State control? High debt? High taxes? We don’t know.

The Conservative Party will shortly have a new leader. As a Conservative Party member, I will do everything that I can to ensure that the new leader is firmly committed to a clean Brexit and will deliver one in October. And since a general election is likely – the extremist Remainers will most likely engineer that – we will have to get that new Conservative leader back into No.10.

If we don’t, the most likely outcome is a Corbyn minority government propped up by the arch-Remainer SNP and Lib Dems. Will that coalition of horror deliver Brexit? Of course not.

I’m not pretending that everything in the Conservative garden is rosy. It isn’t. But the Conservative Party is still the best bet to deliver Brexit. Vote Conservative!

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* This article was originally published here