Most of the Tory defections to UKIP are put down to disillusion, lack of recognition, fruitcake tendencies etc. The two Peers who defected to UKIP this week were not exactly unexpected and the two people concerned had always been slightly semi-detached from the party. However, the news today that Professor Tim Congdon has decided to vote UKIP is an entirely different kettle of fish and, to be honest, horrifies me.Tim Congdon has been one of the brightest intellects in the Tory Party for years. The Party should be extremely worried about losing him. To dismiss his defection as 'a little local difficulty' would be wrong. His defection is a blow to the Tory Party and no one should argue otherwise.
LINK: Tim Congdon's Telegraph article HERE
39 comments:
Tim 'No Pensions Crisis' Congdon?
He passed his sell-by date in about 1990.
UKIP if you want to, the lady's not for sleeping...
Simple, Iain. If Congden thinks that the UKIP is worth joining, then he's no loss to the Tories.
Iain,
Unbelievable. Are you finally going to stop insulting UKippers like me and start taking our genuinely held Tory beliefs seriously?
Wow!
We can't support Mr Cameron's patronising and misconcieved attitudes towards Britain but do want the country to be run better by a Tory government. The problem is that we are written off as racists and fruitcakes without our ideas being debated. Why not have a debate about the value/harm of grammar schools, low taxation and all the rest of it. Running away from ideas this far from an election just doesn't make sense.
GS what an unbelievably complacent comment.
Prof. Congdon’s article in the says he will vote UKIP if David Cameron is the Conservative Leader at the next General Election. Iain is right to express concern at the implications of Congdon's position for the Conservative Party.
However, Congdon’s article will undoubtedly resonate with many thousands of grass-root Conservatives throughout the UK. There was a time, when Conservative Leaders had views and expounded them.
When Margaret Thatcher (architect of the longest period in government we had in the 20th Century) found people did not like or understand her views and policies, instead of capitulating, or going quiet, she would fight her corner and tell them why she was right in clear and unambiguous terms. That is the way to government.
The Conservatives need to tap into the vast antipathy against the EU among voters and explain / educate the voters about how much it controls us, and in which issues it is handcuffing our own elected government.
However, in a party where paternalism, position, ego-massaging and greasy pole-climbing is endemic, I fear we shall have great problems in garnering support for any radical, let alone anti-establishment approach.
No doubt GS is a Europhile, who would prefer to lose the majority Eurosceptic wing of the party.
Iain,
As you think that this is a real blow, I have a question for you.
What should the Conservative Leadership do, to reduce the risk of UKIP defections, whilst not losing the new image that is being forged?
Always sorry when anyone leaves the party . Two things strike me 'though.I'm not sure how involved Prof Congdon will be in UKIP but if he does want to work with his local branch it won't be long before he becomes disillusioned. UKIPs percentage of oddballs is much higher than in other parties. I doubt an intellectual like him will find it to his taste.
Secondly the Profs fame has much reduced since Mrs Thatchers time and in any case the value of economists no matter how eminent can be overdone. Who can remember the letter that that was sent to Mrs Thatcher by about 300 now?
Apologies to all about how my earlier posting appears. I tried, evidently unsuccessfully, to get the hyperlink with 'Daily Telegraph'.Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. :-)
Two lose two Tories may be regarded as misfortune,to lose three looks like carelessness.
Don't you mean the FRAMSDEN one?
I'm glad you posted this Iain even if you didn't provide the link http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/01/11/do1102.xml#form
Obviously, as a Tory you are going to spend more time discussing people who move from other parties than those who leave the Tories, hence your very short piece on the departing Lords. Nonetheless it is items like this which makes this site much more thoughtful than a Tory cheering section & keeps me, an ex-Lib Dem square peg, coming back. Any living party need thinkers at least as much as cheerers.
Tim Congdon is on the Bruges Group's Academic Advisory Council. Keith Standring is also in the Bruges Group.
At the 97 and 01 elections Europe was a large issue that the Conservatives spoke about and we scored about the same seats in each election and Labour had massive majorities in the HoC. At the 05 election we said little on Europe and secured a 20% increase in seats and Labour were reduced to a much smaller majority.
So why would Congdon want us to talk more?
UKIP boast that they cost the Conservatives about 40 seats at the 05 election, let us take them at their word. So instead of a Labour coalition govt with fewer Lib Dems, we ended up in a Labour majority with 60+ LDs thanks to UKIP.
So the reality is that UKIP = more euro friendly parties in power.
It is why John Redwood calls a UKIP vote a stupid vote and the fact that Congdon advocates it is so utterly bizarre.
I was at a meeting Tim Congdon addressed last year. We heard him the same day we heard Patrick Minford.
Minford was lucid, accessible and entertaining, Congdon frightened everyone with a manic denunciation of flatter taxes. Really manic. We thought he was going to make himself ill.
If he thinks that he'll find kindred spirits in UKIP he's got another thing coming, he'll burst a blood vessel when he comes up against that lot's activists.
to HF. I am a Tory, but saying that people voting for what party they believe is bizarre strikes me as an odd statement.
The Tories are in a harder position than Labour to move to the centre ground. Nulab haters had nowhere to do, no one ever took the SWP seriously. In the same way Tories generally don't go BNP.
However, UKIP is a moderate right-wing party and that is why it is a threa to us. I watched Iain's 18 DS discussion the other night and the Tories there seemed very complacent about UKIP too.
The answer, as ever, is to steal their policies, be more Hawkish on Europe, look properly into flat taxes. Then they have no platform with which to hurt us.
Hate to say it but Standring is right.Congdon is only one of many.
Some will end their membership and vote UKIP-others will retain membership but vote UKIP at the GE.
Too many of the membership now regard Dave,Hilton and Maude as a very bad joke.
Davis is the man-the boy and his mates just don't cut it!
Charred Knobble your comment has all the intellectual vacuity that so utterly frustrates good people at the right of the Conservative Party. One does not believe that the state should stop meddling with the market and the citizenry out of indifference to the problems of the poor . If there is one lesson of the 20th century it is that States cannot solve these problems and the attempt is disastrous for everyone.
I support David Cameron on the lines of pragmatism and because I believe that he is forced to attack the Liberal middle ground by the regionalisation of voting patterns . He has given many hints that he is navigating his way to a moderately right wing agenda by the only electorally possible route.
When a nit wit like you sneers at the genuine concerns of a respected party member you do great harm. When you do so in the silliest sloganeering way it is worse.
Be Quiet ! The grown ups are talking.
Having said that I cannot see that Timbo`s actions are justified by the position of the Conservative Party . I suspect there is more to this than meets the eye. Intellectuals do write books and like to posture. The article by someone announcing he is a disgruntled but sticking with the programme is yet to achieve prominence.
An odd one
You don't win elections with people like Congdon. Stay the course.
"one of the brightest intellects in the Tory Party"? Ouch! Damned with faint praise :)
If Congdon believes the tory party policies (if that's not a dirty word) include"a badly rationalised environmentalism, Third World do-goodism, holier-than-thou "social inclusiveness" and the rest" it seems "Dave"'s attempts to reform and dispel the image of the Nasty Party are never going to be successful.
I'm a regular to this site (love it, Iain), but as a non-Tory I never post anything. However reading the comments here... Jeez! Some of you are approaching crazy.
Davis is the man, Anonymous? Get real. Davis is a right-wing, second rater, who'd put off ANY potential Tory voters. (Sorry, Iain - can I call you Iain? - but its true.)
CityUnslicker - you ask the question how the Tories can move to the centre while keeping their right-wing vote. And then you suggest that the Tories become more hawkish on Europe and advocate flatter taxes. How is that approaching the centre ground? You have to chose between the extreme right and the centre.
Henry Mayhew - you want a debate on grammar schools. Jeez! Why do people get worked up about grammar schools? Yes, DC has said there's no going back to grammar schools- based education policy. But he was quite clear when supporting Blair's Education Bill last year that he supports selection by academic ability. The Tories will have an education policy that streams people by ability, they just won't waste time building new grammars. Isn't that enough?
And as for Congdon, its actually quite clear that he doesn't understand anything that David Cameron is doing. What's that phrase? "There is such a thing as society its just not the same as the state." That seems to me to be quite a moderate Tory position.
Misplaced environmentalism? Mmmm... well I guess he'll be in his private-run old people home by the time we have to deal with the consequences.
The more I read articles like his, the more likely I am to vote Conservative. The more likely you are to win an election.
But that just wouldn't make half of you ultras happy, would it?
Cameron by his statements is seen as favouring Big Govt/Nanny State. Congdon is for smaller state as are many Conservatives.
Cameron is trying to ride two horses with one backside. Not possible for for longer than a furlong.
No good mocking UKIP.
HF @ 12.22 wrote, "Tim Congdon is on the Bruges Group's Academic Advisory Council. Keith Standring is also in the Bruges Group."
Yes HF, I am proud to be a supporter of the Bruges Group. I am also proud to be an active member of The Freedom Association and the BETTER OFF OUT campaign. Your rather amateurish use of the Stalinist guilt by association tactic doesn’t phase me one bit.
If you had spoken to your colleagues at CCHQ you would have been told that following service as a regular soldier in the Grenadier Guards, I then worked for 33 years in British Intelligence. Since leaving the Service I have been occupied as a political activist.
I am a Conservative Councillor on Rother District Council, where I am currently a member of the Licensing & General Purposes Committee; Overview & Scrutiny Committee; Seafront Strategy Working Group and Chairman of the Improvement & Resources Sub-Committee.
anonymous @ 12.47pm has got it right. It is because the Conservative Party is not giving the UK the leadership it should, that I anticipate that Tim Congdon’s defection to UKIP will certainly not be an isolated incident, since his reasons resonate with thousands of Conservative Party members and supporters.
I think that Congdon's comments reflect some very deep seated unease amongst some key thinkers. The Head of a very respected free market think tank said to me "I have very reluctantly come to the horrible conclusion that Cameron beleives what he is saying[re: Toynbee etc]".
Either you think, like newmania, why bother supporting Cameron if when he gets elected he is simply Blue Labour ? Or you think that its all a cunning plan, and actually he is a wolf in sheeps clothing (in which case, I wonder why he has to hide?)
Neither is good, both are intellectually dubious, each is a path to ultimate failure on some level.
I am not amember of the Bruges Group but I have attended a couple of their meetings. I was struck by the charm of the people and the high level of knowledge and debate .I met no ultras extremists racists or bigots. Frankly I met Conservatives. They are not politically realistic but UKIP has whithin ranks many admirable people . It is a great sadnes that they cannot continue whithin the party and I hate this"Fruitcake" pie throwing .
On the other hand .Graham K stop saying Jeeez . I agree with you that David is not as insensitive to the Party as is claimed. On the other enviromental baby kissing is only that and your precious twirruping is most off putting
Iain, I respect your view expressed on your blog regarding Congdon leaving the conservatives, but I am it totally agreement with GS on this.
" he will vote UKIP if David Cameron is the Conservative Leader at the next General Election. Iain is right to express concern at the implications of Congdon's position for the Conservative Party."
Why? And what implications would there be for the rest of us if we give succour to the views of a few, who jump ship when they don't get their own way through democratic means within the conservative party.
What about the countless thousands of members on the ground who continued to work hard throughout the last 15 years, while the people at the top tore each other apart fighting for a particular agenda or for personal ambition?
I did not vote for IDS and accepted Hague and Howard as the choice of the parliamentary party. But I have to say I was a damn sight more interested and concerned at the behaviour of some of our MP's during those difficult times, the way IDS was treated was disgraceful!
If this charactor is not even going to give the present democratically elector leader of our party the time to try and make us an electable force again then good riddance.
Hope that he manages to find a decent UKIP candidate to vote for where he lives, and that he accepts that it is the people who stay within the conservative party who will set the agenda, not those who leave to join a right wing conservative pressure group!
Being a very brainy intellectual does not necessarily confer political wisdom - viz. David Irving
hf,
Might I suggest that your political analysis is a little off base? In 97 and 01 the Tories were really on the back foot on all fronts. Quite frankly they could have promised the electorate the moon and they'd still have lost by a country mile.
By 95 the flaws in NuLabour were becoming more obvious. Combine that with a large part of their support base being anti-war and you have some pretty good reasons for Labour's decline that have absolutely nothing to do with the eu.
Personally I suspect that the bogey of a major split over the eu is a canard hoisted by the pro-eu minority within the Tory party and the larger pro-eu leftie elite. My read of the situation is this:
A lot of the electorate are at least suspicious of the eu if not actively against it. But they would like a reasoned debate. Sadly the pro-eu elite are deeply afraid that a rational debate will expose their dream house to be nothing but a castle built on sand. And as evidence I suggest you to examine the behaviour of one T Blair, esq. He may be a lying charlatan, but his political antennae weren't too shabby back in the early days.
Why do you think he avoided a referendum on the Euro? Why did he work so hard to ensure the British referendum on the constitution came right at the end of the eu-wide approval process? Because he believes that the electorate would have given both propositions the bums rush and he couldn't face the humiliation.
I also suspect that he was worried that having started something he might not be able to stop it. Imagine if the public, flushed with the success of seeing off Johnny Foreigner's rule book or funny money, got the bit between its teeth and then decided it didn't want to be part of the club at all.
So, please, don't interpret the Tories' horrendous electoral performance as being the fault of mentioning the eu. The problems were, and still are, far more deep rooted than that. And IMHO shying away from the eu debate is, along with several other things, worsening their problems not making them better.
Hayek's I think you are wrong to believe the Tories have to sell the public the political consensus because that is what Labour & the LibDems are selling. Most people do indeed want to be better off whether by state handouts or by wealth creation. If they believe statism will make them personally richer they will go for it - if they believe free markets will, over any serious timescale, make them richer that is what they will go for. You have to convince the population that wealth creation is a better route to wealth than handouts & that the British economy, growing at 2.5% is not doing well compared to the world average of 5%. Instead the Tories have aquiesed in the lie that our economy is doing well - what could be more supportive of Labour.
These should not be difficult things to prove but nobody else is going to do it for you. If you have leaders who insist on saying that Labour are right & the Tories wrong you run the serious risk of convincing people. You also have to start doing it now because you can't start building a change of mood during the next election campaign.
"It is why John Redwood calls a UKIP vote a stupid vote and the fact that Congdon advocates it is so utterly bizarre."
Whyever is this so? perhaps Redwood has lent out the brain cell he is sharing? Redwood will continue to trot out that line until the day (or week?) before he defects, if indeeed he even has the courage of his convictions.
"why would Tories vote BNP when almost all of the BNP's policies are left wing protectionist anti-market policies?"
A)They overlook the economics because they're more concerned about immigration
B)Protectionism was traditionally a right-wing position and many old-fashioned Tories like the idea of Britain being a major manufacturing power. Similarly the BNP's anti-supermarket stance appeals to those on the Right who have a nostalgic vision of the local butcher, baker etc.
Don't worry, for every Tory that goes UKIP there are two Labour supporters going Tory (and another one Lib Dem)
malcolm said...
Always sorry when anyone leaves the party .
12:01 PM
That's nice. I left in John Major's day and I didn't think anyone had noticed.
The right is splitting. The division benefits no one but Blair and Brown. UKIP might have been a loony party five years ago, but not any more. Where I live I know so many ex-Conservatives who have gone off to UKIP - including those who have been elected to public office - that it is no longer the case. The Conservatives used to be a "broad church" where a variety of views could be held. No more it seems. Many now view UKIP as the true Conservative party.
In Canada the right only regained power after the Canadian Alliance and the PCs merged.
Blair's had an ambition ambition to turn the Labour party into the natural party of government. He has. The fissures on the right will keep us our for years to come. That will be his greatest legacy. How utterly depressing.
I don't think that you should be horrified, Iain -- lots of bright people vote Labour, after all. Bright people seemed to focus more than the rest of us, and though we should not lose sight of Congdon's focus it's not one that answers the problems that we have to deal with over the next decade or so. We have to teach quite a large proportion of our population to swim -- then we can make the river run faster.
Why, oh why, didn't David Cameron pull the Tory MEPs out of the European People's Party within weeks of his election?
He PROMISED to do so and his broken promise is one of UKIP's best recruiting sergeants.
Maybe they're slightly screwball. Young political parties are always slightly screwball. Keir Hardy was slightly screwball. But his party grew in stature, attracted men of ability, and has now been in power, on and off, for many years.
As time goes by it is more and more apparent that Dave and his cohorts no longer represent a section of the old conservative voting public. I am one of them. UKIP is the only protest vote that I can stomach. The alternative is not voting which is becoming a more enticing prospect.
As more of our freedom slips away to Brussels Bluelabour does nothing.
I would vote for the party that gives us a referendum on our European membership
anon 10:32
We have already been given one.
There was a referendum in 1975.
As the Tory Party is simply not a conservative party any more, quite how anyone who has conservative convictions can *not* vote UKIP is baffling to me as getting 'Dave' into Number 10 will not get a conservative into power.
From the lips of the Tory Leader himself, if you want more 'green' regulation, a few more years of tax-and-spend poured down the drain on SkoolznHospitalz, 'redistribution of wealth' and more state/less civil society (and is not civil society what so called 'conservatives' are damn well supposed to be 'conserving'?), then sure, vote for Cameron's party... or vote Labour, it does not much matter which as the only ideology on offer from both is the same regulatory centrist Big State shtick.
I suspect most Tory die-hard supporters now are ideology-free 'tribal voters' out in the shires who would vote Tory if even if the late lamented Screaming Lord Such was leading the party, or Kim Il-Sung for that matter. The only thing surprising about a thinker like Congden no longer supporting a party that does not believe in the things he does, is why it took him so bloody long to come to that very obvious conclusion.
With the exception of the ID card issue, which 'Dave' actually managed to get on the correct side of, there is not a single really *substantive* issue (i.e. not inconsequential fox hunting) that would make a blind bit of difference which of the two main parties you voted for. Most policy 'arguments' between Labour and Tory supporters is over "should we regulate more or a LOT more?" or "we'll regulate better that you''ll regulate".
Although I do not agree with a lot of their policies, the UKIP is the only party not singing from the same hymn sheet.
I suspect the Tory party is fast approaching its "1922 moment" where is suddenly stops being one half of a binary political system.
Any society not already divided by tribe (clan, religion, race) has a tendency to support those who are not utterly objectionable to them and appear to have a good chance of winning. People like winners.
People like to be on the winning a side and this is understandable, given that in the past one needed to weigh up the likelihood of being caught on the losing side and done in or disenfranchised. If the potential winner is not likely to "kill" you if they win, then such considerations might well creep into our subconscious even if they are not based in reality.
The point is, if Cameron appears to not be a winner or as much a danger as Labour and Labour has the "will do me in even if I voted for them" feel about them, then I suspect UKIP support will grow if they match voters' desires. Once the second quartile of adopters make the jump and are seen as successful, strong or winners in themeselves, the middle bulk will see the way the wind is blowing and make a choice.
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