Home What's New Speeches & Articles Newsletter - Jul 2008 Biography Diary Contact Information Photo Album Parliamentary Highlights Publications Links MEPs' Transparency   Conservative Party Latest News from Conservatives.com Conservative Party Website
		The Lib Dems deserve the Booker Prize The Guardian - May 21 2004 The Lib Dems are getting desperately and decidedly economical with the truth, writes Tory Roger Helmer Yesterday I saw a copy of the Lib Dems' East Midlands election address. It deserves the Booker prize for fiction. It contains a series of statements which are just plain untrue, or (as my lawyer-son might say) injurious falsehoods. Some examples: "East Midlands Tory MEPs defied Michael Howard over the Conservative manifesto." Like all Tory MEPs and Euro-candidates, Chris Heaton-Harris (the other East Midlands Tory MEP) and I were invited by the party chairman to endorse the Conservative European manifesto. Both the party leader and the party chairman were satisfied with our responses. I was with Michael Howard today in Northampton, launching our asylum policy, so I showed him the Lib Dem leaflet and asked whether he thought either of us had defied him. He replied "No". "One (of the Tory East Midlands MEPs) was even sacked from his position within the Conservative party." News to us. Neither of us has been sacked from any position within the party. "Conservative MEPs failed to turn up for vital votes on Europe." No MEP has a 100% voting record - not even Lib Dem MEP Bill Newton Dunn, top of their East Midlands list, who is obsessive about voting. But official EU parliamentary records show that British Conservative MEPs have a higher participation rate in plenary votes than Lib-Dem MEPs. People who live in glass-houses ... Newton Dunn has form on economy with the truth. He secured a well-paid job as an MEP by misrepresenting his views on the EU to his Conservative selection meeting in 1998. But soon after he was elected as a Conservative, he found the new, Euro-realist mood of the Tory MEPs a bit too bracing, so defected to the Lib-Dems. More recently, he issued a press release claiming credit for a parliamentary reform group which in fact he joined late in the day, and which was actually formed much earlier by a group of MEPs including Chris Heaton-Harris. It is pretty shabby to claim credit for other people's work - but not too shabby for Newton Dunn. The joker in the East Midlands Euro-election is ex-Labour MP and perma-tanned talk-show host Robert Kilroy-Silk, leading the UKIP list. With national name-recognition, Kilroy-Silk will certainly attract a few more votes than last time. Chances are he could pip Newton Dunn for the sixth seat.