The Conservatives and the EPP - why we should lay off them

8.00.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Sun 28th Jun 2009

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The Conservatives have now left the European People's Party in the European Parliament and formed the European Conservatives and Reformers.

As part of their new group they have some, well best to describe them as, nutters - you know homophobes, sexists, racists and climate change deniers and Nazi-supporters. The arguments why they are evil have been well discussed on the internet but maybe we should lay off them.

Why, well all European groupings are just that groupings. No party will share each other's views totally, Labour have some oddballs in their grouping and having been to lots of European Liberal Democrat (both ELDR and ALDE) events I can tell you there are some parties I have little or nothing in common with and neither should the Liberal Democrats.

Of course the Conservatives should have chosen better but they were hampered by the need to have a certain number of MEPs and cover at least seven countries, so their choice was limited.

One good thing they have done is add the word Reform to their name - that is what the Liberals should be doing - we want real reform to make Parliament and the EU work, the Conservatives don't really want to reform the EU - they have been in a position over the years that if they wanted to they could have at least tried!