01 May 2014

New pro-Europe British Conservatives party to stand in EP elections

A group of pro-Europe British Conservatives has decided to launch a new party to stand in the upcoming European elections as an alternative to David Cameron’s Conservatives, and Nigel Farage’s eurosceptic UK Independence Party (UKIP). EurActiv spoke to its founder, Dirk Hazell.

You have launched a new British political party under the EPP family. Why did EPP support your party with their "brand" and values, at the risk of upsetting the Tories, their traditional partners?  Who took the decision at EPP?

As you say, 4 Freedoms Party (UK EPP) is a new British political party: political endorsement came from the EPP’s leadership under the guidance of the late President Wilfried Martens.

The EPP never wanted British Conservative MEPs to leave the EPP Group but, after his injudicious pledge during his 2005 party leadership campaign, David Cameron ordered his MEPs to create a new Eurosceptic alliance. Too often in Britain, particularly when it comes to Europe, internal party politics have prevailed over the national interest.

Will this facilitate Merkel/Cameron relations once the big issue of "UK in Europe" is being negotiated?

A British EPP voice in the European Parliament is essential if we are to build a stronger Britain in a reformed Europe. Since leaving the EPP Group in 2009 and moving away from the mainstream European centre-right, British Conservatives have made themselves increasingly ineffective and marginalised in the European Parliament.  VoteWatch’s independent analysis of this growing isolation notes that since January 2013, the Tories’ group has voted with UKIP’s group in every two votes out of three: a tragic waste of British talent and influence.

To complete the Single Market, create and safeguard good and sustainable London jobs in financial and other services, protect consumers, combat climate change, and grow our economy through education and new skills, we must work within Europe’s mainstream.

What is the vision of the party, and how different is it from that of the Tories in terms of manifesto for the elections?

We want neither a centralised Europe nor a centralised UK micro-managing people’s lives. Safeguarding Britain’s local and regional identities matters more to us than to the Tories. British leadership helped to make freedom, security and prosperity the European norm. Echoing Chancellor Merkel’s speech to the British Parliament, we should all again work together to make Europe even better.  The Social Market is fundamental. “We are all in it together” must be public policy, not just a glib government sound bite.

British politicians must not get away with blaming “Brussels” for housing shortages, educational shortfalls, archaic transport, aircraft carriers without planes, substandard cancer care and other domestic problems for which British politicians are alone responsible.

In common with some Tories, we know London’s future requires completion of the single market, with freedom to supply services at which London, as a magnet for talent, leads the world. We support the manifesto objectives of organisations such as the CBI, TheCityUK and the Federation of Small Businesses.

For the May European Parliament elections, voting constituencies are regional.  Which is for smaller parties easier than local "first past the post" for MPs, but more difficult than the national proportional elections of most countries' MEPs.  Where will you field candidates and how many do you expect to win?

As our first step, 4 Freedoms Party (UK EPP) will stand in London. Londoners consistently support full membership of the EU without renegotiation, or a dodgy mystery deal. Europe’s leading city urgently needs to recover our powerful voice within Europe’s leading political family: the mainstream centre-right EPP.

Full interview

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