London: Conservative rebels pledged “undying loyalty” to David Cameron as the party’s MPs gave their leader a hero’s welcome in Parliament on Monday.
The Prime Minister was welcomed by over 300 of his MPs at a meeting of the party’s back-bench 1922 Committee.
Bill Cash, the Tory MP who led the rebellion on Maastricht that undermined John Major’s Conservative government in the 1990s, told Cameron to his face that he would not cause any trouble. One of Cameron’s allies said it was “Bill Cash pledging undying loyalty”.
Cash, a constant thorn in the side of the Coalition before the election, said afterwards that any MPs thinking of causing Cameron trouble on Europe should “put a sock in it”. The MP said: “The reason for that is this: we asked for a referendum, I ran the Maastricht referendum campaign and we were refused. We got hundreds of thousands of signatures.
“The difference is David Cameron has said that there should be reform and fundamental change in our relationship with the European Union.
“He listened to us. There is a dialogue all round, and it is taking place. We got a referendum, we got a veto of the treaty.”
The welcome at the meeting, with the noise of MPs banging committee room benches echoing down the Palace of Westminster corridor, will further cement Cameron’s authority in the party.
Cameron was repeatedly cheered as he read out names of Tory MPs who pulled off unlikely victories last Thursday, such as Andrea Jenkyns, who defeated Labour’s shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, and Kelly Tolhurst, who saw off Ukip’s Mark Reckless, the former Tory MP.
Brandishing a copy of the Conservative manifesto, Cameron told his MPs that he would be focused on delivering its policies between now and 2020. It was “a manifesto for the working people of this country, so the Conservative Party is the undisputed party for the working people of this country, the party of aspiration and also the party of compassion”.
He told MPs: “We are going to deliver the manifesto. We start out in a very good mood. This is what we were elected on and this is what we are going to deliver.”
A key priority in his first 100 days in power would be to give veto powers to English MPs on laws that affect only English voters. Cameron also said there would not be another attempt to unseat John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, who is set to be re-elected next Monday.
Speaking afterwards, George Osborne, the Chancellor, said: “It was a massive moment of celebration and congratulation for the Prime Minister. It felt very much like his personal triumph as well as a triumph for the party. I have never seen anything like it in all the years I have been coming to these meetings.” Cameron later told media that he was still going to quit in 2020 despite the scale of his win, but he warned that Tory MPs who had won Labour or Liberal Democrat seats would need to work hard locally to hang on to them.
He said: “We have just won an election where Ukip got 14 per cent of the vote. Work that one out. “I want the Conservative Party to demonstrate the true compassionate conservatism — fighting for social justice, reforming education, reforming welfare, helping people. “The third thing is bringing our country together — and bringing the United Kingdom together. And those things make up a genuine ‘one nation’ agenda.”
