TOP TORY QUITS TO JOIN UKIP

THE crusade to get out of the EU got a huge boost last night when a former Tory grandee announced that he is joining anti-Brussels party Ukip.

Lord Stevens of Ludgate told the Daily Express that he had given up hope David Cameron would take the radical action required to unshackle Britain from the yoke of Brussels.

The peer – chairman of Express Newspapers until 1999 – is the latest political heavyweight to back Ukip because of the Prime Minister’s failure to hold a referendum about whether Britain should quit.

He follows a string of high profile Tory defections and his appeal to others to act on grounds of sovereignty puts the Tory leadership under massive pressure for a tougher anti-Brussels line before next month’s party conference.

Lord Stevens said: “I would urge everyone to consider whether they want to be run from the unelected Brussels Commission or Whitehall. I believe in the United Kingdom being the United Kingdom. We fought two World Wars to preserve that.”

He’s a giant of Fleet Street, an immensely respected member of the House of Lords and a huge asset to Ukip and to the cause of Britain’s freedom

Nigel Farage

A jubilant Ukip high command will unveil their latest recruit at the party conference in Birmingham this week. 

Leader Nigel Farage said: “He’s a giant of Fleet Street, an immensely respected member of the House of Lords and a huge asset to Ukip and to the cause of Britain’s freedom.”

MEP Roger Helmer and former Conservative chief whip in the Lords, Alexander Hesketh have already been welcomed into Ukip’s ranks.

Although no longer an official member since a dispute with the leadership over Europe in 2004, Lord Stevens is a life-long Conservative supporter who has sat in the House of Lords as a “Conservative Independent”. Now he has decided his only course is to become a fully-fledged member of Ukip.

Lord Stevens said he believes that only a referendum asking people if they want to be in or out of Europe, held as soon as possible and certainly before the next election in 2015, will do.

He admitted that turning his back on the Conservatives was a hard decision. “All my life I have been a Conservative supporter,” he said.

“It’s a wrench for me, to say I’m pro-Ukip and effectively anti-Conservative. That’s why it’s taken me eight years. But I have made up my mind. I’m taking the plunge.

“I had hopes of this Government but I finally got exasperated. My patience is exhausted because I don’t think this Government is going to do anything. I delayed this decision because I was hopeful the Government would be more positive on sorting out the problems of Europe. They are just prevaricating. I don’t regard it as disloyalty to the Conservative Party. It’s loyalty because I’m pointing them in the right direction.”

Lord Stevens said a vote to endorse a renegotiated relationship with Europe, which Mr Cameron is believed to be considering, was insufficient, because any new position would end up being “nibbled way at again” by eurocrats.

“They just don’t let go, and the Prime Minister and Cabinet ministers don’t have time to watch over Brussels all the time,” he said. “The referendum has to be in-out, yes or no: do you want to be part of the EU and I would want it as soon as possible.”

More people are speaking out against Brussels, said Lord Stevens – and he praised the Daily Express crusade for leading calls to leave the EU.

“I’m very proud of the Daily Express, that it’s leading the charge. It’s a brave and a great decision,” he said.

“The Daily Express has always been a campaigning newspaper and it has always believed in Britain and the working man. The working man is basically in favour of free trade and not being run by Europe.”

He warned failure to tackle the Brussels issue, as well as shortcomings on other policy areas such as simplifying tax would cost the Tories votes.

Lord Stevens, 76, said that since he was a young man he had supported a free trade area and no more.

“The people of this country voted in 1975 for a free trade association, not for anything more than that,” he said.

But he added warnings that the aim of the new bloc was complete political and economic union had been proved correct. “Every step along the way has been another step in that direction and I have been opposed to it all my life.

“We can operate perfectly effectively outside the EU. We want the freedom to have a free trade agreement. Our trade outside the EU is increasing more rapidly than within the EU and that’s been the case for some time.

“We have an EU with an ageing and declining population, now in serious economic trouble which we are helping to bail out.”

Lord Stevens said the key problems with the EU included its ever-increasing cost to Britain, its sky-high spending and the massive red tape it imposes.

“The bureaucrats in Brussels have nothing better to do than to dream up new regulations,” he said.

“To get the UK economy moving we have to cut regulation and we can’t do it under the present regime. We have to reduce immigration, which costs us a fortune, and we can’t do that as long as we are part of the EU.”

Mr Cameron faces increasing pressure from within his own party as well as outside to give Britain a say on our relationship with the EU.

Last week Tory MP John Baron said he was launching a new cross-party group to urge Mr Cameron to pass a law committing the next government to a referendum.

On Monday we reported how former PM Sir John Major and ex-Defence Secretary Liam Fox were stepping up calls for our relationship with Brussels to be redrawn and the results endorsed in a referendum.

However, many Tories want to go further and announce a straight vote on whether to remain an EU member, an idea Mr Cameron is resisting.