Sceptic website sets out to topple Hague
BY ROLAND WATSON, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
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THE creator of a Eurosceptic website, welcomed by
some backbench Tory MPs, claims that it could help to
topple William Hague.
Sean Gabb, a Tory party member and university lecturer, said that his monitoring of the views of Tory MPs on the Internet was part of a grassroots drive to "root out" the current party leadership, and could work in the same way that the Left captured Labour in the 1980s. Its aim was to rebuild the party "from the bottom up" to the extent where Mr Hague could be "replaced" within five years.
Dr Gabb, a leading member of the Libertarian Alliance, believes that Britain should withdraw from the European Union. His website records the European views of all MPs and would-be party candidates, and has attracted huge interest among party activists. One Tory MP said that it risked plunging the party into a "McCarthy-like witch-hunt".
The website is being used by constituency chiefs when selecting candididates, and is said to have cost at least two pro-European former MPs their chances of returning to Westminster. Others have threatened legal action against Dr Gabb, claiming that their description as Euro-friendly could damage their chances of selection.
Writing in Free Life, the journal of the Libertarian Alliance, Dr Gabb said the Internet had transformed political debate and allowed individuals and previously fringe pressure groups to mobilise and challenge party leaderships directly. Groups such as the Libertarian Alliance, the Countryside Alliance and the Democracy Movement had emerged not as "allies or dupes" of the Conservative leadership but as rivals to it.
Claiming that the Tory leadership was little different from that of the other main parties, he said that individuals outside Conservative Central Office were for the first time setting the agenda of debate within the party. "We have not won the debates, but the leadership is impotent to stop us from saying and doing as we like. Give us another five years of this, and we can probably capture the Conservative Party more surely than the Left captured the Labour party in the 1980s."
Dr Gabb said that, with initiatives such as his "Candidlist" website, "we can root out the careerists and ensure that people of good principle are elected in their place.
"Our predecessors in the 1970s believed that they could influence the Conservative Party at the top. We may be able to rebuild it from the bottom up - to the point where the William Hagues and Francis Maudes can be replaced."
Michael Fabricant, the Eurosceptic MP for Lichfield, had previously congratulated Dr Gabb on his "interesting" website, adding: "It makes fascinating reading." However, on learning of the stated tactics, he said: "If this is used unwisely it could become a Mc-Carthy-like witch-hunt which will weaken the Conservative Party and strengthen those other parties like Labour which would wish to see greater integration with Europe, achieving the complete opposite of that which Sean Gabb and I would like to see."
http://www.candidlist.demon.co.uk