Michael Keith Smith - Conservative Democratic Alliance

Conservative Democratic Alliance

In response to the Conservative Party's treatment of the Monday Club and the Club's lack of will to fight it, Mike Smith founded, in 2001, the Conservative Democratic Alliance (CDA), a new traditional Tory pressure-group and immediately targeted Oliver Letwin's seat distributing leaflets saying that he was not a real Tory. In 2002, Iain Duncan Smith expelled Mike Smith from the Conservative Party for threatening to stand candidates against Conservatives. Smith responded with a High Court writ, and Duncan Smith was forced to reinstate Smith's party membership. Iain Duncan Smith then reportedly said that he had "plans to make the Conservative Democratic Alliance a proscribed organisation, which would ban party members from belonging to it." In the event, no such action was taken.

Mike Smith later left the Conservative Party and stood as a parliamentary candidate for the United Kingdom Independence Party in Portsmouth North in 2005. The Labour victory was claimed by the Conservative candidate to be a result of the UKIP candidacy, a claim also made by Richard North of the Bruges Group.

He became unwell in early 2008 and attempted to move the CDA closer to the centre ground, warmly endorsing party leader David Cameron's "Agenda for Change" Smith declared in a speech that he wants to see more members of minority groups taking senior positions within the Conservative Party. This was greeted with disdain by the membership and supporters. In December 2008, he announced on the CDA's forum that he was disbanding the group so as to support the Tory party in the run-up to the next UK general election. The CDA committee met, and the group was wound up.