Airstrip One

10%

... or thereabouts of the Parliamentary Conservative Party voted
that the case for military action was as yet unproven. I hesitate to use the term "roll of honour" as Ken Clarke was among them, and honour is alien to that old Mosleyite. However here's the line up of antis, with their Eurosceptic ratings from Sean Gabb's candidlist:


Peter Ainsworth (Surrey East) Not Committed
Richard Bacon (Norfolk South) Eurosceptic
Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) Europhile
John Gummer (Suffolk Coastal) Europhile
John Horam (Orpington) Eurosceptic
Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) Eurosceptic
Dr Andrew Murrison (Westbury) Not Committed
Richard Page (Hertfordshire South West) Not Committed
Anthony Steen (Totnes) Europhile
Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth & Horncastle) Eurosceptic
Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) Eurosceptic
Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) Europhile
Robert Walter (Dorset North) Europhile

An interesting list, showing that what Tory opposition there is is not (as I suspected before looking up the list) motivated by the rump of Europhiles fretting about being "left out" from France and Germany (note to British neocons - yes this is a pathetic motivation, but so is the dread of making war solely to keep in with America.)

However the fact that only five Eurosceptic Tories voted for this motion throws a sorry light on the state of Conservative thought on foreign policy. One only needs to ask what would Enoch do, and we can sense the decline in the calibre of the backbenches in our lifetime.