| Topic: | Good Riddance to Quentin Davies- he should now resign | |
| Posted by: | David Giles | |
| Date/Time: | 26/06/07 19:26:00 |
| The defection of Quentin Davies comes as no surprise to me. Being a former junior Foreign Office official, and a Chairman of the Conservative Group for Europe, his extremist pro-European Federalist views have long been unpopular in his constituency, in the Conservative Party and in the country as a whole. Although he was once a member of the Conservative Front Bench, Michael Howard had the good sense to demote him and he obviously kenew that he could no longer expect promotion or respect in a Conservative Party or Government led by David Cameron. Acoording to Wikipedia: "Davies is one of the highest paid MPs for his outside interests and has held many directorships and consultancies with many companies during his time in parliament." "He was once fined for 2 charges of animal cruelty relating to sheep on his estate; following the immediate dismissal of the shepherd and his conviction, he was greeted by Labour MPs with a retort of 'Baaa!' His estate is no longer rented to a cattle farmer." "The defection was described by Lincolnshire County Council's Tory leader Martin Hill as an "act of treachery and betrayal" " The political blogger Guido Fawkes published an extract from a speech by Davies dated almost two years prior to his defection. In this speech he described the Chancellor Gordon Brown as "extraordinarily incompetent", "imprudent", "extraordinarily naïve" and said in conclusion "I trust and believe that something nasty will happen to the Chancellor in electoral terms before too long. He will have no one but himself to blame." He was elected to a very safe Conservative seat of Spalding and Stanford in 1987.He was elected then and subsequently at every general election as a Conservative and owes his career to the Conservative voters of his constituency and to his membership of the Conservative Party. If Quentin Davies has any honour, he should immediately resign and fight the seat again as the Labour Candidate in the subsequent by-election- provided of course that the Grantham and Stamford Constituency Labour Party would want to have him ! It will be interesting to see when he appears in an Honours List and whether or not this defection merits a peerage. |