Thursday 12 September 2019

What has happened to the Conservative Party?

I remember, even after Margaret Thatcher - who was a radical, rather than a conservative - made the big break from the post-war consensus, that a cabinet minister lost his post because he was revealed to have fathered a child outside marriage.  Now, we have a prime minister no less, voted in by a large majority of the party, who is a serial adulterer. Prime minister Johnson has had the whip removed from the last representatives of the true Conservative tradition leaving only high Tory relics and spivs. Yesterday, the highest Scottish court found that he had committed virtually the ultimate sin, disrespecting the monarch by lying to her over the justification for prorogation.

One wonders whether the party has any standards at all these days, but it appears this clause of its constitution is still in force:

79 No Member of Parliament of either House, no Member of the European Parliament, no prospective Member of the European Parliament, no Assembly or prospective Assembly Member in England or Wales, no Assembly Member or prospective Assembly Member or its equivalent in Northern Ireland, no Councillor or prospective Councillor, no Candidate or prospective Candidate, no Party Member, or applicant for membership, no Party Officer or prospective employee; shall have engaged or engage in conduct which brings or is likely to bring the Party into disrepute.

Is the compliance officer asleep on the job?

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