Pro-Euro Conservative Party
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Pro-Euro Conservative Party was set up by John Stevens and Brendan Donnelly, members of the European Parliament who had been deselected by the UK Conservative Party and believed that the Conservative Party was too eurosceptic. They stood in the 1999 European Parliament Elections, in which they achieved 1.4% of the vote but failed to win a seat.
In the same election, the Conservative Party increased their vote to 34.2%, up slightly from the 1997 General Election and the previous European election, although still well down on their last General Election victory in 1992. The United Kingdom Independence Party, which campaigns for withdrawal from the European Union, got 3 seats.
The BBC were claimed in a study funded by the Eurosceptic organisation, Global Britain, to have "often treated [the Pro-Euro Conservative Party] at a similar level to the Tories themselves"[1]. The BBC disputed the method by which this was done and the context in which the report was conducted, while not disputing the facts within the study.[2]. It was also claimed by the PECP's opponents that, despite the party's name, a number of their candidates were originally from parties other than the Conservative Party.
Apart from getting 3.8% of the vote in the 1999 Kensington & Chelsea by-election against Michael Portillo, the Pro-Euro Conservative Party faded away with Party campaign chief Mark Littlewood explaining:
- "People hate parties, they hate the Conservatives and they hate the pro-euro cause: we had four of the most unpopular words in the English language."
In 2002 the Pro-Euro Conservative Party disbanded in favour of the Liberal Democrats.
