European elections 2019: Michael Heseltine says he won’t ‘betray my country’ by voting Tory if candidate is a Brexiteer ‘Do I betray my country or my party? That becomes a simple choice with a simple answer’

Former Deputy Prime Minister and Tory peer Michael Heseltine said he will not vote for his party’s candidate in European elections if they are a Brexiteer.

Speaking to the BBC’s Newsnight programme, he said his belief that Brexit is damaging to the UK’s national interest meant that he would abandon his party loyalties.

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The UK is due to hold European elections on 23 May after Theresa May was forced to agree on an extension of Brexit with Brussels until 31 October.

Mr Heseltine told presenter Emily Maitlis that in the elections he “will not vote for a Brexit candidate”.

“All my life I have voted Conservative, but if I’m faced with the choice of a Conservative Brexit candidate, I and I think huge numbers of people like me will not vote for them,” he said.

‘Groundswell of Remain supporters’

“And I’ve only done the tiniest straw poll of my friends today and they had told me months ago that they’d never vote for a Brexit Conservative. I said so, I warned the party that (there are) large numbers of Conservatives who will not support a Brexit candidate.”

“I’m one, and it was quite apparent from the local election results that there is now a groundswell of Remain supporters who whatever their traditional party loyalties are appalled at the decision to leave the European Union.”

The anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats along with independent candidates and the similarly pro-EU Green Party all saw a surge in support in last week’s local elections, where more than 1,300 Tory councillors lost their seats.

The Conservatives will now have to fight in European elections that they did not want to hold, while fighting on both their eurosceptic and europhile flanks.

The party is planning a low-key campaign in the vote, with some polls predicting Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party will capture many traditional Tory voters, who are angry about the delay to Brexit.

‘Can they produce a manifesto?’

Mr Heseltine said that his support will hinge on the messaging from the party leadership. He said: “By and large the test has to be: what does the leader of the party and her cabinet say, they have to produce a manifesto. Can they produce a manifesto?”

“If they don’t produce a manifesto, the Prime Minister’s word will be the word of the Conservative Party, and I have to make it clear that I would not vote for the Prime Minister’s policy and I think a very large number of people feel exactly the same.”

He said that he is faced with the choice of voting against his party and abstaining, adding: “I’m not really one for abstaining.”

“If you say to me, and you could, ‘but will you betray your party’, my choice is a simple one. Do I betray my country or my party? That becomes a simple choice with a simple answer.”

“Britain’s self-interest in inextricably interwoven in the peace and security of western Europe”

He said that he had not yet decided which party he will vote for, pointing to the “problem” of the divided nature of the anti-Brexit parties, which include the Lib Dems, Greens and newly formed group Change UK.

But he said the stakes meant he would have to make a choice saying: “Britain’s self-interest in inextricably interwoven in the peace and security of western Europe, I believed it as an undergraduate, I’ve believed it every day since, and I believe it strongly today in a shrinking world.

“I am not prepared to allow even my loyalties to the Conservative Party to override my loyalties to my country.”