By Martin Banks - 20th August 2010
“Surely the summer break will give Cameron time to reflect on his European folly
Edward McMillan-Scott
The former leader of the Conservative MEPs has suggested the formation of a Tory-Liberal coalition in parliament, to replace the mainstream link which David Cameron abandoned this time last year.
The demand comes in the wake of the decision to pull the British Tories out of the mainstream EPP grouping in parliament, a move which some argued would leave the Tories on the periphery of European politics.
Senior MEP Edward McMillan-Scott said, "Surely the summer break will give Cameron time to reflect on his European folly and to follow through on the so far highly successful coalition at home by bonding with the liberals in Europe - as I have done?
"Some form of link with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats - which is on the winning side in 90 per cent of votes in the European parliament - is a legitimate and credible alternative to isolation."
McMillan-Scott, a vice-president of parliament, left the Conservative party and joined the Liberal Democrats in March in protest over Cameron's new EU alliance with a "bunch of nutters", as Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg described them in the run up to the UK general election.
McMillan-Scott points out that while the majority, mainstream EPP governs 13 EU countries and deploys 14 commissioners, the liberal family is also in government in 13 countries and has eight commissioners.
He said, "Cameron's allies are nowhere near government."
Cameron's Latvian ally, the Freedom and Fatherland party "has just linked up with an extreme nationalist group in Latvia", he added.
In the recent Belgian, Dutch and Hungarian elections, he said that Cameron's allies "have seen their vote disappear and in June's Polish presidential election, the candidate of Cameron's allied Law and Justice party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, flopped too".
McMillan-Scott is an independent MEP who was leader of the Conservative MEPs between 1997 and 2001. He felt out of favour with the Tories after he defied their wishes in standing against Michal Kaminski, a controversial Polish MEP, for a vice-presidency post.
Kaminski was unsuccessful but later became leader of the ECR group, which includes the UK Tories.
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