Dear Dr Gabb

I have recently been added to the list of approved candidates.  My position on the issue of the European Union and further integration is clear.  In response to your first question, yes, I am opposed in principle to this country joining the single currency. Should the circumstances you describe in your second question arise, then yes, the UK should reconsider its position within the EU and be prepared to negotiate withdrawal and, in those circumstances, I would vote accordingly.

You may or may not describe my position as "sceptic".  What is not in doubt is that many genuine individuals who oppose further European integration are sceptical in the extreme of your motivation given recent statements you have made to the media. It has done little to enhance the reputation of Candidlist as a reliable, well-intentioned source of information to the Conservative Party membership.

Yours sincerely

Gordon Bell

Dear Mr Bell,

Many thanks for your e-mail of today's date.  On the basis of the answers given in your first paragraph, I have added you to the Candidlist with a sceptic classification.  Though you have not answered the first question as clearly as I would like, your willingness to vote for withdrawal from the European Union in the circumstances I have described inclines me to overlook this ambiguity.  I am, however, more interested in your second paragraph, and wish to the best of my ability to set your mind at rest.

You mention doubts that the Candidlist is "a reliable, well-intentioned source of information to the Conservative Party membership".  Whatever my direct or quoted statements in the media, you can rest assured that the Candidlist is as reliable a source of information as I can make it.  In no case have I allowed a personal like or dislike of a candidate to sway my classification.  In all cases where I have corresponded with a candidate, the whole unedited correspondence has been published.  This enables any visitor to our web site to go behind our classification to see the grounds on which it has been made.  In one instance - I cannot be specific - a selection committee has chosen to understand a correspondence in a sense quite opposite to my understanding of it.  My ambition is to go into the next election with a personal statement on the Candidlist web site of views on Europe from every Conservative candidate.  Give me this, and my classifications will be redundant except as part of a wider conversation.

I turn now to the matter of my intentions.  Strictly speaking, these are not important.  I might be receiving large sums of money from that Labour Party - I am not, by the way! - to run the Candidlist, the intention being to destroy the Conservative Party as an opposition force.  That would have no bearing on the accuracy of the Candidlist.  As said, my intention is to provide objective proof of classification wherever possible.  But intentions are important from a psychological point of view, and so I will explain what mine are.

I joined the Conservative Party in March 1979 and campaigned hard in the next three general elections.  At around the same time, I joined the Libertarian Alliance - an organisation with which I remain closely connected, editing its journal, Free Life.  You will gather from this fact that I belonged to what may be called the ultra-Thatcherite wing of the Party, crying up every privatisation and deregulation.

By 1997, my enthusiasm for the Conservative Party had faded.  Undeniably, the economic reforms of the Thatcher and Major Governments had made this country the most dynamic in Europe.  Even so, many other changes to law and administration had brought us very close to a police state.  The war on drugs had led to the erosion of both financial privacy and due process.  The various Criminal Justice Acts and Firearms Acts were also tyrannical in their substance.  At the same time, the Government's European policy had taken us, via the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty, into something like a United States of Europe.

I voted Conservative in 1997, but only because I feared a Labour Government slightly more than continued Tory rule.

Today, I hate and fear Tony Blair.  He is a wrecker, a warmonger, and at least a potential tyrant.  But I see little positive reason to want a Conservative return to power.  The reason is that everything Mr Hague says on Europe and on almost every other issue reads like a cheap insurance policy.  He wants to "save the pound" - but only for five years at a time.  He wants no more integration - but quietly accepts all that has so far happened.  He wants not to be ruled by Europe - but nevertheless to be in Europe.  It seems reasonable to believe that he and the rest of the Party leadership are willing to say no more than is needed to gather in the votes.  If they succeed, they will come back into office free of specific promises and able to continue the softly pro-European policies of the Major Government.

The purpose of Candidlist is to try and stop this.  The Candidlist Test requires straight answers on important questions.  These answers are made universally available on the Candidlist web page, and will remain available effectively forever.  I am sure you will have noticed that answering yes to the first two questions does not automatically commit you to withdrawal from the European Union:  it is conceivable, even though not likely, that a future Conservative Government will be able to renegotiate our membership on satisfactory terms, and that helping to gain this would wholly discharge your obligation.

This being said, I will go further.  By answering yes, you have committed yourself to defending our national sovereignty and democratic self-government - but only to the degree that a reasonable person would regard as sufficient.  It is possible that unforeseen circumstances will emerge that require us to accept closer European integration.  If this ever happens, then all previous commitments against must be regarded as of no binding force.  To give an illustration of this point, let us suppose a parliamentary candidate had promised in 1931 always to oppose closer links between Britain and the Soviet Union.  This might have made excellent sense at the time, but could not reasonably have been invoked in the very different circumstances of 1941.  This allowance does not allow an MP to stand up in 2004 or whenever and say that, notwithstanding his Candidlist pledge, he had now been swayed by some trivial or foreseeable change in circumstances to accept the Euro - I think of some waffle about "clear evidence of supply side reforms in Euroland" and the like.  When I say "unforeseeable circumstances", that is what I mean.

Again, the Candidlist Test cannot be supposed to prevent a change of mind.  Peel changed his mind on the Corn Laws.  Gladstone changed his mind on Ireland.  Asquith changed his mind on female suffrage.  All that can be required is that such changes should be made openly and with sufficient explanation why.

And so the Candidlist does not demand commitment to an unreasonable position and does not demand that commitment be unconditional.  All it does demand is a degree of honesty on Europe from Conservative candidates that would once have been taken for granted in our political culture, but which is now largely absent.  In the London and other elections of last week, many politicians and journalists said how disappointed they were at the low turn-out.  The main reason for this loss of interest in politics must surely be that people do not trust politicians to tell the truth or to do what they personally believe to be right.  I know that many Conservative voters stayed away last week because they suspect the honesty and intentions of the Party leadership.  It is no longer enough for a senior figure to stand up and vaguely articulate the fears of ordinary Party members and voters.  We have been deceived too often to fall for that trick.  What we want is firm commitments.

In providing an opportunity for making clear and public commitments on Europe, the Candidlist can only help the Conservative Party.  There is no reason to suppose that more chanting of Mr Hague's in-but-not-ruled-by mantra will bring victory at the next election.  So let the Party try honesty instead.

You are welcome to disagree with me, and I will publish your disagreements on the Candidlist web site along with this correspondence.  For the moment, though, please accept my best wishes to you personally and the truth of my desire for a genuinely conservative Conservative Government.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Sean Gabb
Candidlist Webmaster

Note:  The Candidlist Test is:

Do you answer in the affirmative both of the following:

1) If elected or re-elected to Parliament, would you oppose our joining the Eurozone even if joining were to be recommended by the Party leadership?

2) If elected or re-elected to Parliament and required to choose between accepting the supremacy of European Union law in this country and leaving the European Union, would you vote for British withdrawal?

If you cannot answer both of the above in the affirmative, do you accept the line currently taken by William Hague, which is to oppose our joining the Eurozone for this and for the next Parliament and to resist any further British integration into the European Union?