Kemi Badenoch’s red lines on Net Zero and the ECHR are facing open revolt from centrist Tories. The Telegraph has the story:
Mrs Badenoch has rejected some former Conservative MPs as candidates at the next election for refusing to align with her rejection of the 2050 Net Zero target and her pledge to leave the ECHR.
But centrist Tories insist that those who supported the 2050 target and Britain’s ongoing membership of the controversial treaty should be able to stand in future.
In an article for the Telegraph, Mrs Badenoch wrote that she was building a “party for the future”, not a “retirement home for failed politicians”.
She said that some of her former colleagues “should never have been candidates before” and they would soon be informed they would not be allowed to stand again.
Prosper UK – a pressure group set up in an attempt to bring the Conservatives back to the centre – claimed that a candidate’s support for Net Zero did not make them less conservative.
Responding to the Tory leader’s remarks, Prosper said: “Kemi Badenoch is right to seek candidates with serious experience beyond Westminster. But the Conservative Party must remain a broad church.
“Requiring agreement on every major issue risks shutting out talented people, narrowing the party’s appeal and making it harder to build the coalition needed to govern.” …
Prominent supporters of Prosper include Amber Rudd, the former Home Secretary, and David Gauke, the former Justice Secretary, who lost the whip in 2019 for defying Boris Johnson over Brexit.
Other backers of the group include Andy Street, the former West Midlands Mayor, and Baroness Davidson, who led the Scottish Tories from 2011 to 2019. …
Responding to her remarks, Mr Gauke said: “There are centre-Right voters who think we should stay in the ECHR and/or think we should get to Net Zero.
“After all, both were long-standing Tory Party policies. Does the Conservative Party want their support or not?” …
Prosper and Mr Gauke’s remarks were dismissed by Lord Frost, the non-affiliated peer and former Tory Cabinet minister who served as Mr Johnson’s Brexit negotiator.
“There is no point in having ‘talented people’ if they don’t want to implement the party’s policy,” he said. “That’s how the Tory party got into a mess before and repeating it will not help in any way. Kemi is entitled to candidates who want to do what she wants to do.”
Worth reading in full.
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“After all, both were long-standing Tory Party policies. Does the Conservative Party want their support or not?” Certainly not now foxtrot Oscar you’re not a Conservative and probably never have been. They should not have been Conservative Party policy in the first instance. Away with you.
We can all see what happened to the real ‘broad church’ – the Church of England. Trying to please everyone except God, it became moribund and is all but extinct. If you don’t stand for anything in today’s world, you won’t stand.
Well colour me surprised (not the slightest).
It doesn’t matter what she says. Neither she, nor the LibCONs who infest her Party, can be trusted.
Never forget what they did. Never forgive them. And never vote for them again.
I admire your resolve – and that of other commenters – because just for a second I found myself being inwardly pleased with this article before I came to my senses and remembered that I should ‘never trust a Tory’
I should make myself write that out every time I have a pro Badenoch thought. Will I never learn
Badenough is correct in what she is saying, and Lord Frost explains it even better.
That said, the Conservatives betrayed Britain. For that, I will never forgive them.
Downvoted in error – apologies. But one might add to “Never trust a Tory”, “nor anyone else”, but that disenfranchises one.
All non-essential staff may go home early
Believing in Net Zero is a failure at the first hurdle for any candidate: having basic common sense.
It looks like there is not going to be much clear water between the Tories and Reform at this rate.
If Prosper UK is trying to bring the Tories “back to the centre”, from which direction do they think they will be pulling. Most of us have observed it being ever more left until after the GE 2024 when it tried to pretend it did notr believe in all those things it did in government.
Badenoch’s moves are all too little too late for the Conservative and Unionist Party. Fourteen years of betrayal of conservatism be neither forgotten nor forgiven. The sooner this toxic brand ceases to exist altogether the better it will be for the conservative cause.
Looking at the Conservative party through the lens of wisdom gained during my adult life, I am more than ever convinced that they stopped being properly conservative somewhere between 1900 and 1950, after that it was mostly lip service until a short period in the 1970s and 1980s when the party had a conniption and threw out those who knew some of what needed to be done.
It should have gone decades ago.
Lord Frost is bang on.
He is always bang on.
Kemi Badenoch’s red lines on Net Zero and the ECHR are facing open revolt from centrist Tories.
But Net Zero and having the ECHR in British law are not centrist policies. They are parts of the madleft total-control state, and their purpose is to take vast areas of social and economic policy out of the hands of the voters. And this of course is why the globalists support Net Zero and the ECHR.
I wonder if, like Starmer, they prefer Davos to Westminster?
The centre-right people are entitled to their opinions. But the Conservatives are unlikely to gain a majority while their policies are undermined by the centre-right.
Also a good reason for Reform to reject an alliance unless for limited and local reasons.
Prosper UK, well that’s sort of an oxymoron given they want to continue with failed policies by having their ‘talented people’ in place.
Wonder who these “centre right” people who want to stay in the ECHR are. My experience is that the last three years have wiped out ECHR stayers completely in the local association: they all want out, even the Lefties.
Here it is in a nutshell – Badenoch for whatever reason says she wants the party to be actually conservative, but lots are not on board. What is the actual point of the Tories? The “centrists” should piss off and join the Lib Dems and the rest should beg to join Reform or just retire quietly, in shame.
This is why the Tories are not trustworthy.
They’re not centrists. They’re lefties who carpetbagged into the Conservative Party at Cameron’s invitation.
100%
Was rather thinking that it was Major bouncing us into the Maastricht Treaty that initially sowed the seeds of the drift leftwards. Most certainly Cameron (Call me ‘Dave’) put the drift leftwards on steroids after he became leader in 2005.