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I wasn't a long-term get-outer. I only came reluctantly to the view we must leave somewhere btwn 2011 & 2016. I don't care that much whether we leave now or leave later. I do care, absolutely, that the result of a democratic process run by rules all agreed in advance be respected
I cannot remain a member of a party that sets up a democratic process, runs it by rules it chose, loses, gets re-elected promising to honour the result, & then despite all that overturns that result. That violates the central covenant of democratic constitutional politics.
There are some splendid MPs in the Conservative Party. But in December 200 Conservative MPs voted to keep May as PM specifically in order to prevent Conservative members choosing a PM that wld honour the 2017 manifesto & 2016 euref by taking us out of the EU on time with no deal.
It is those 200 MPs that are the Conservative Party. May is its leader. Their views are the Party's view. Their policies are the Party's. Their actions are the Party's legacy. We can pretend nothing else, no matter how much we wish it were otherwise & it ought to be otherwise.
This collective institutional duplicity on the EU is not something new for the Conservatives. Indeed, it is the reason we voted to leave in 2016. For 4.Elections in a row from 1997-2010 the Conservatives ran promising to renegotiate our position in the EU.+
+Ukippers & labour cynics said "As soon as they get a sniff of office they'll drop all that." 2010 proved them right. Cameron made me & other Conservative activists collective liars. Election promises over decades meant nothing.
Now the Conservatives have made their members collective liars once again (& worse). There must be some deep rottenness in the way the Conservative Party works for it to exhibit such sustained & repeated institutional duplicity over decades.
