Dear Dr Gabb

As I have no choice but to appear on your list with some kind of classification against my name, I would like to take this opportunity to help you classify correctly my views on European integration.

I should first point out that I find the very existence of such a list as a tool for selection committees to be misguided.  There are a number of 'Europhiles' on your list I would rather see in Parliament any day than some 'Eurosceptics' - for the all-round skills, character and
judgement these individuals would bring to the job of being an MP.

With regards to the 'test':

1. If elected to Parliament I would campaign vigorously against UK membership of the Eurozone on the grounds that it would entail an unacceptable transferral of sovereignty to EU institutions.  It would represent a major step backwards in terms of devolving greater
decision-making powers to citizens away from governmental institutions.

The one thing that would change this - and which your 'test' does not allow for - is if a clear majority of British citizens voted in favour of membership.  Such a referendum result would be difficult for me to accept personally but I would feel compelled to argue that the Conservative Party  should accept it and adopt a policy of recommending UK entry. To do otherwise would simply not be sustainable for a broad-based political party.

2. Yes.

I hope this is helpful.

Yours sincerely

Stephen Crabb

Dear Mr Crabb,

Many thanks for your e-mail of earlier today.  On the basis of your answers to the Candidlist "test", I have reclassified you as a sceptic.  Your reservation is entirely reasonable and does credit to your honesty.  I have not added the reservation to the test, because there are so many other oone possible.  I leave it to individual candidates to interpret the questions as they please, and make my own mind up accordingly.

You raise a good point with regard to the probity of many Europhiles.  Certainly, there are sceptics on the Candidlist that I would have trouble voting for, even though I regard Europe as such an important issue.  I think particularly of Phil Gallie and David Amess, whose advocacy of identity cards frightens me, and Lady Olga Maitland, whom I regard with a combination of loathing and disgust for her part in carrying the Offensive Weapons Act 1996.

But Europe is an important issue - indeed, a supremely important issue - and I am glad to have helped, even if only at the margins, to produce a more sceptical roll of candidates in the more winnable seats.  This being said, I lack an invincible belief in my own virtue and in the villainy of those who disagree with me.  Europhiles are not generally bad people.  They just happen to be on the wrong side in this debate.  Many are changing their minds, and I hope many more will do so before the matter of our relationship with the European Union comes to a crisis.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Sean Gabb
Candidlist Webmaster

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?