Delusions of grandees

I've always liked Frederick Forsyth as a novelist and as a campaigner for Britain's withdrawal from the European Union, but if this Telegraph article is anything to go by, then Mr Forsyth demonstrates the real problem Britain has with party support. People who just can't let go.

Mr Forsyth is credited with calling for David Cameron's Conservative party to smash UKIP by pledging to repatriate powers back from the EU or threaten withdrawal.

One of the Conservative Party's highest profile celebrity supporters has urged David Cameron to "kill Ukip stone dead" by committing the party to a policy of seizing back key policies from Brussells, telegraph.co.uk can reveal.

He continued: "That's a million votes - and most of them are ex-Tories, disgruntled, disillusioned. If you can call back a million missing Tories who vote Ukip, you are in Downing Street."

The point that Mr Forsyth fails to understand is that we've had other Conservative leaders who were stronger, much more conservative and more right wing than the soft-left liberal Cameron and they were unable to do what he is asking Cameron to do - even assuming that Cameron wanted to!

Mr Forsyth refuses to recognise the fact that the Tory party is as much a committed, paid up member of the pro-EU brigade as the Liberal Democrats - and that's the problem. He knows full well that the Tory party isn't going to change it's position on the EU, but he's unable to bring himself to admit that fact and realise that the party he supports no longer stands for what he believes in.

Mr Forsyth is merely a high profile, celebrity example of something that applies to millions of people up and down Britain. People who still think the Labour party stands for working class Britons or that the Tory party stands for independent minded conservatives. They don't. They abandoned their core supporters a long time ago - and yet millions of people, like Mr Forsyth, will dutifully tick the appropriate box on the ballot paper out of loyalty for the party that long ceased to have any loyalty to them or the British nation.

As long as they continue to do that, then nothing will change. He must know that. He's deluding himself if he thinks otherwise.