Nuttall and Hannan on why they won't be joinng UKIP

David Nuttall, chairman of the "Better off Out" group of MPs and Peers, have both written about why they will not be defecting to UKIP.

David Nuttall MP explained yesterday why he will be staying in the Conservative Party on the Conservative Home website yesterday here: Daniel Hannan MEP explained on 20th August here, and reiterated after the Carswell defection that he stands by all the arguments in that post.

Both point out that if the Conservatives win the 2015 election there will be a referendum on EU membership and that if Labour wins, there won't.

Dan goes on to write

"If David Cameron had not offered an In/Out referendum, I would not have been able to fight the recent European election as a Conservative. But he did; and Ukip is in denial about it.

“You can’t believe a word Cameron says!” snarl my commenters, many of whom have convinced themselves, in a kind of false recovered memory syndrome, that he fought the last general election promising a referendum.

"As a matter of fact, I don’t think the PM has ever pretended to be anti-EU; I’d have less respect for him if he had. He made only two commitments when he ran for the leadership: that he’d pull his MEPs out of the European People’s Party; and that individual parliamentarians would be free to campaign against EU membership. He delivered on both."

Dan concludes that he fears the prospect, if Labour sneak in on a derisory share of the vote through divisions among their opponents, of

 "A decade of Ed Balls and Ed Miliband. A decade of Labour’s wastrel incontinence. A decade of deeper European integration."

Personally I am not convinced that Britain ought to leave, but I am convinced that we should have a referendum on the subject. Because we have to settle the question "In or Out" and the only way to do that is to give the British people the choice. I'm not supporting a referendum because I'm fanatically pro-Europe or anti-Europe, but because I am pro democracy.

The best piece I have read on how sad it is that Douglas Carswell, a good man who has made a tragically bad decision, decided to join UKIP, was written by Matthew Ancona in the Telegraph, called "Carswell has just made a Labour victory more likely."

As Ancona writes, 

"His powers of persuasion presumably remain undimmed, but his powers of judgment have gone on a long weekend."

" ... by adding his political heft to Ukip, he has helped Ed Miliband, who will often be the beneficiary of Farage’s party taking votes from the Tories in marginal seats. What possible comfort can Carswell derive from making a Labour victory more likely?"

"His contention that all the main parties are the same, though fashionable, is also daft. “Different clique, same sofa” is a good T-shirt slogan. But that’s all. Is Carswell seriously suggesting that the reforms enacted by Michael Gove in schools and by Iain Duncan Smith in the welfare system would have gone ahead if Labour had clung on in 2010?"

Quite.

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