The ugly truth is a smug Tory elite has sneered at the party faithful for decades

A measure of the bizarre political times in which we live is that the Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative party felt yesterday that he had to email his dwindling band of activists and urge them to believe how much he values them.

‘I am proud to lead this party,’ said David Cameron.

‘I am proud of what you do. And I would never have around me those who sneered or thought otherwise.’

Sadly, that is not true. Mr Cameron is surrounded by people who sneer at the morals and values of his party’s grassroots supporters.



Bizarre: Prime Minister David Cameron felt yesterday that he had to email his dwindling band of activists and urge them to believe how much he values them

His defensive remarks were prompted by the disgraceful observation by one of his cronies — possibly Lord Feldman, his tennis partner and Tory vice-chairman — that the rank and file were ‘swivel-eyed loons’.

The insult had the authentic ring of the Notting Hill dinner table about it, as the Cameroonian elite ponder over the Barolo the ghastliness of the party members they have the misfortune to lead.

But Lord Feldman — if, indeed, it was he — is in a distinguished line of Tories who hate their party.

And they hate it because on a range of issues — Europe, same-sex marriage, the family, immigration, law and order and selective education — the mass of Conservative Britain obstinately refuses to think like them and their pals in the expensively educated metropolitan elite.

The sneering started when Mrs Thatcher became leader, embodying the traditional middle-class virtues that would win her three elections.

She was seen as ‘the little woman’ or ‘the housewife’ who would be in charge temporarily. Those who supported her to the hilt were patronised as unsophisticated and reactionary.



The liberal elite found Mrs Thatcher's years in power unbearable. In the end, most of the Tory party were determined to get rid of her for standing up against European monetary union

As is the case today, the Tories in the Seventies were led by a cosy, narrow and self-serving clique — and they wished to preserve their power and their way of doing things irrespective of what most of their supporters actually wanted.

This liberal elite found Mrs Thatcher’s years in power unbearable. Despite the reverence, awe and admiration in which most of the Tory party held her, in the end they were determined to get rid of her for standing up against European monetary union and further losses of sovereignty to the EU.

But Europe was not the only problem. I remember, after a fringe meeting at the 1987 Tory conference at Blackpool, how aghast was a Cabinet minister who had addressed it because some people there had actually wanted more privatisations.

Mrs Thatcher had, of course, already privatised and reinvigorated any number of state nationalised industries, from British Telecom and British Gas to British Airways.

I can still see the expressions of shock and disgust on the faces of her Cabinet colleagues as she applauded a speaker during the law and order debate for advocating the restoration of capital punishment.

Yet it was simply a sign that Mrs Thatcher was in touch with her party’s sentiments at the grassroots.

But sadly those who succeeded her showed only disdain for the activists.

When, in the teeth of hostility from the party, those same Cabinet colleagues of Margaret Thatcher forced her resignation in 1990, a gulf opened up between the leaders and the led over Europe.

Anyone at Cabinet level who sympathised with the majority view in the party that the Maastricht Treaty gave away too much sovereignty were branded ‘bastards’ by the leadership. Those activists who supported the ‘bastards’ were dismissed as stupid.

But it was the leadership that appeared stupid. Not least after the debacle of Black Wednesday in 1992, when Britain was forced to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism — a forerunner of the euro — because it was driving us into bankruptcy.



Theresa May christened the Tories 'the nasty party' at the Conservative conference in the autumn of 2002. She was referring to the party's perceived 'intolerance' of homosexuals and ethnic minorities

Yet still the sneering leadership didn’t get it. Instead of accepting that the voters were appalled by economic mismanagement, they blamed defeat instead on the Tories’ supposed social attitudes.

This is why Theresa May christened the Tories ‘the nasty party’ at the Conservative conference in the autumn of 2002. She was referring to the party’s perceived ‘intolerance’ of homosexuals and ethnic minorities.

I can still smell the anger of activists at Bournemouth on the afternoon of her speech.

They bore no hostility towards homosexuals or ethnic minorities, but after Mrs May’s speech they felt they were being vilified after decades of loyalty and hard work for the party.

The relentless disdain for true blue Tories continued with Michael Howard’s leadership in 2003. In fact, things took a turn for the worse. Failing to understand why many Tories backed UKIP’s aim for a referendum on Europe, he branded that party one of ‘cranks, gadflies and extremists’.

Once Mr Cameron won the leadership, his rarefied henchman Oliver Letwin was charged with finding 'new' policies that bore only the faintest resemblance to traditional Conservatism

But it was when Mr Cameron ran for the leadership that the sneering went into overdrive.



He wrote an article in The Spectator magazine in October 2005 entitled ‘Time for a completely new party’, which said it all.

In that article, he singled me out, along with the brand of Conservatism I stood for, as the problem with the ‘old’ Tory party.

The late and much lamented commentator Frank Johnson, referring to Tony Blair’s break with Labour’s past in 1994 when he tore up part of his party’s constitution, observed that ‘Mr Cameron has found his Clause Four moment: it’s called Simon Heffer’.

I, and millions like me, felt duly sneered at.



Unfortunately for Mr Cameron, unlike Clause Four, we did not disappear. We simply grew in number and stopped supporting him.

This is why Mr Cameron felt compelled to sneer once more at us when he joined the Michael Howard bandwagon to insult UKIP, branding the innumerable Tories who voted for the party as ‘loonies, fruitcakes and closet racists’.

Once Mr Cameron won the leadership, his rarefied henchman Oliver Letwin was charged with finding ‘new’ policies that bore only the faintest resemblance to traditional Conservatism.

It was the only way, Cameron believed, to win back the public. When he was warned that the party’s core vote was shrinking as a result of this shift from traditional Toryism, he countered that it wouldn’t be until the core vote was down to 20 per cent in the polls that he would really have succeeded in transforming the party.

In other words, he wanted traditional Tories out.

The leadership sneered at decent, Middle England Conservatives because they no longer felt any need for them. Steve Hilton, Mr Cameron’s far-from-stupid strategist, urged me not to worry that the membership base was shrinking.

The party would, he said, use the internet to contact the public — as Barack Obama had. When I asked him what website would drive old ladies to the polling station, he struggled to reply.

The fact is the Tory establishment has long despised the truly Conservative people who are the backbone of the party and whose only crime is to love their country and its traditional values and culture

Last year, a constituency chairman told me she had refused to pay her party association’s subscription to Conservative Central Office because her members did not want the money used to campaign for gay marriage.

Her refusal was met with disdain and incomprehension.

Similarly, George Osborne’s friends say he cannot understand why people want marriage recognised through the tax system. They say he feels it is the sort of parochial, middle-class issue the Tories should avoid.

A month ago, Kenneth Clarke lost the Tories tens of thousands of votes by sneering at UKIP supporters as ‘clowns’.

Now we have the ‘swivel-eyed loons’ incident: not a shock, but part of a pattern that has run for more than a quarter of a century, in which grand Tories dismiss the deeply held convictions of those to whom they owe their places in politics.

Where that leaves Mr Cameron’s promise not to have around him those who sneer is anyone’s guess.

Mr Osborne, Mr Clarke, Mr Letwin and Mrs May all attend his Cabinet. And Lord Feldman — innocent until proven guilty, of course — does his bidding in Central Office.

The fact is the Tory establishment has long despised the truly Conservative people who are the backbone of the party and whose only crime is to love their country and its traditional values and culture.