Pro-Euro Conservative Party - Reception

Reception

A MORI opinion poll of 1911 people published 16 February 1999 suggested that a new pro-EU conservative party could possibly win 11% of the vote.

The party received an endorsement in The Independent from writer A. N. Wilson, as well as support from Paul Howell, who was a speech writer for Margaret Thatcher and Edward Heath and a Conservative MEP, and Anthony Meyer, the "stalking horse" candidate against Margaret Thatcher in 1990. After William Hague ruled out Britain joining the euro under a Conservative government, former cabinet minister Ian Gilmour said he would vote for the PECP, and four former Conservative MPs - Julian Critchley, Nicholas Scott, David Knox, Robert Hicks - and four former MEPs - Margaret Daly, Adam Fergusson, Madron Seligman and Anthony Simpson - wrote in a letter to The Times that "We would have wished that William Hague's party had put forward a manifesto more like that of the Pro Euro Conservative Party. Like many Conservatives, we shall find it very difficult to know how best to cast our vote on 10 June." The Conservative Party threatened to expel any members who supported the PECP, and did expel Critchley and Gilmour a fortnight after the election.

Although the party's election literature featured Ken Clarke, asking voters "Are you more a Clarke Conservative than a Hague Conservative?," Clarke did not approve of the party or its campaign and with Michael Heseltine met with the PECP at Heseltine's home in May 1999 to try to persuade them not to stand. Conservative MP Geoffrey Howe who became head of pro-euro group Britain in Europe during the election campaign did not endorse the PECP, but said the resignations from the Conservatives "should send a clear and sombre signal to our party leadership". Andrew Lansley, then a vice-chairman of the Conservatives called them "a party of the disgruntled and disaffected".

Despite the party's name and their position as "rebel Tories", some of their candidates and officials were from the European Movement and originally from parties other than the Conservatives, such as Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The chief press officer Mark Littlewood was a Liberal Democrat who had also been a spokesman for the European Movement and later rejoined the Liberal Democrats.