Is Mathew Parris the only sensible commentator to appreciate that Douglas Carswell is a complete and utter fraud? For weeks he has been exasperating Eurosceptics by refusing to rebel and for going on record as saying that Cameron’s European stance was one hundred percent correct. He even gave a lengthy interview to the Spectator’s splendid Fraser Nelson saying at length why he could not join UKIP.
So what has caused this volcanic volte face? What, apart from hardening his position on Europe has Cameron actually done to turn Carswell so violently against him? The answer is absolutely nothing. This act of treacherous vanity must have been bubbling away on the back burner for years. Carswell is not the great knight in shining armour selflessly sacrificing his career on the altar of greater Parliamentary democracy. His motivation is purely selfish. If he had sat down with all the other serious Cameron haters and worked out a strategy to damage him and his party they couldn’t have had come up with anything more toxic. And more helpful of putting Miliband into Number 10.
And this is the dilemma that confronts the Cameron haters. Do they loathe him so much that any chance of a Tory victory at the election is shattered in a poisonous explosion of bile? Do they despise him so much that any hope of a referendum on the EU are dashed? The alarming answer to these questions appears to be yes. In same dark and dangerous parts of the Tory back benches the hatred of Cameron borders on a psychiatric disorder. But there is a strict apartheid. Those willing to press the self destruct button and destroy all the economic success that the hardworking people of this country have sweated blood for are in the fortuitous position of having safe seats. If these obsessives have their way they will throw onto the scrap heap a goodly number of thoroughly decent colleagues in marginal seats. They don’t give a damn about them. A wicked betrayal.
But we are told that the likes of Carswell are men and women of great principle, fearlessly fighting for our rights. For, God’s sake please pause while I am violently sick. We are told that they are Libertarians. Well, up to a point. Provided you don’t have the effrontery to want to marry the person that you love.
And now there are mutterings by some Tories that they could not possibly campaign against him as he is a true Conservative. What bollocks. Carswell and his type may have jumped into a lifeboat marked ‘Conservative’ to get elected in the first place. He is as much a Conservative as I am a Muslim.
So Clacton is a chance for everyone who really cares about this country, every decent Conservative and those who believe in social democracy to fight the squalid self interested hypocrisy of UKIP and Carswell. I will be there at the first whiff of political cordite.
Many of us are fed up with our party being infected by these dreadful people. And some of us will fight.
