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Conservatives for Britain

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Conservatives for Britain is a Eurosceptic political pressure group within the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom.

The group's co-chairmen are David Campbell Bannerman, a Conservative member of the European Parliament who had previously served as deputy leader of the UK Independence Party, and Steve Baker, a backbench Conservative member of parliament at Westminster. Other leaders include Nigel Lawson, the group's president, and Norman Lamont, both former cabinet ministers now in the House of Lords.

On 8th October 2015, Conservatives for Britain announced its support for the Vote Leave campaign, stressing in a statement the importance of establishing "a professional, mainstream cross-party campaign that can fight the referendum if the EU fails to allow fundamental change".[1]

Formation

The group was founded early in June 2015, shortly after the dust had settled on the British general election held on 7 May. After winning the election, Prime Minister David Cameron had confirmed his party's manifesto commitment to hold a referendum on British membership of the EU by the end of 2017, after "negotiating a new settlement for Britain".[2] The referendum was announced in the Queen's Speech at the State Opening of Parliament on 27 May 2015.[3]

The Daily Telegraph reported on the new group's formation under the heading "50 Tories plot Britain's EU exit".[4] The Guardian greeted it (referring to a famous outburst by John Major in the 1990s) with the headline "Meet the new 'bastards' – the Tories' 50-strong awkward squad".[5]

On 11 June Campbell Bannerman was reported as predicting that most Tory members of the European Parliament would join the group, but he stressed that it was not at that point at "Out" campaign.[6]

Aims

The group's co-chairman in the parliamentary Conservative party is Steve Baker, who has described the group thus:

Conservatives for Britain is a group of Conservative Party members who: Consider the UK’s present relationship with the EU to be untenable; take an optimistic, globalist view of the UK’s future; support the Party’s policy of renegotiation and referendum based on the Wharton Bill franchise and question; wish to explore what objectives the negotiations must achieve to ensure that they meet the PM’s objective, “to reform the EU and fundamentally change Britain’s relationship with it” (PM, Hansard, Col 1122, 23 March 2015); and will discuss how to prepare for a possible “out” campaign, to be activated if it is apparent that negotiations will not achieve the objectives.[7]

Supporters

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President[8]
Vice Presidents[8]

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Co-Chairmen[8]

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Notes

  1. ^ "Conservatives for Britain statement on the launch of the ‘Vote Leave’ campaign" dated 8 October 2015, accessed 8 January 2016
  2. ^ Conservative Party Manifesto 2015 (Conservative Party, 2015), p. 30, accessed 7 January 2016
  3. ^ Queen's Speech 2015: EU referendum, tax freeze and right-to-buy at bbc.co.uk, accessed 7 January 2016
  4. ^ "50 Tories plot Britain's EU exit" in The Daily Telegraph online dated 6 June 2015, accessed 7 January 2015
  5. ^ "Meet the new 'bastards' – the Tories' 50-strong awkward squad" in The Guardian online dated 8 June 2015, accessed 7 January 2016
  6. ^ Ian Silvera, EU referendum: 14 Tory MEPs 'show interest' in joining Conservatives for Britain in International Business Times dated 11 June 2015.
  7. ^ About Conservatives for Britain at Stevebaker.info, accessed 7 January 2016
  8. ^ a b c "Conservatives for Britain – Supporters". Conservatives for Britain.
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