Michael Heseltine is the establishment’s oldest hitman, a liberal infiltrator and a traitor to the conservative movement. It’s time for conservatives to hit back hard.

A quarter of a century ago Margaret Thatcher was betrayed by many of her closest allies and forced from office. Conservatism in Britain hasn’t recovered since, and it’s unlikely we will ever find another leader of her strength again. She is one of the greatest losses our nation has suffered in the entirety of its history, and had she remained in office I have no doubt she would have lead us out of the EU.

Most people remember Geoffrey Howe’s resignation as being the knife in Lady Thatcher’s back, but not as many remember Michael Heseltine lurking in the background.

Lord Heseltine had already come close to bringing Lady Thatcher down over the 1986 Westland scandal in which he had tried to force the government’s hand to buy from European rather than American companies, and publicly accused Lady Thatcher of dishonesty.

I got to know Geoffrey Howe in his later years, and I am certain that he did what he did out of a misguided and genuine conflict of loyalty – not out of ambition or hubris. Michael Heseltine was the man doing the misguiding, and doing whatever he could in order to bring down Lady Thatcher so that he himself could become Prime Minister.

Thankfully, he failed in that cause. But he has been a malignant tumour to British conservatism ever since.

A well known anecdote on Lord Heseltine is that whilst at university he compiled a list of ambitions:

Millionaire by 25; Member of Parliament by 35; and Prime Minister by 45.

Lord Heseltine was added to the Conservative Party candidates list by Edward Heath whilst he was still a student at Oxford. Despite this, he decided to run as a joint candidate between the Conservatives and Liberal Party in 1968. An associate ran into him late one night at the Tory Carlton Club while he was still on the rise and confided in him in an unguarded moment:

“I’m a liberal, really, but the Conservatives are the only party of government. I want to turn them into liberals.”

In 2010 I was at a Bow Group meeting where he told us that David Cameron was taking the Conservatives in a liberal direction, and any opponents to that would now be unwelcome in the Conservative Party.

He is the original liberal infiltrator, a movement which has taken the modern Conservative Party to the brink of meaninglessness and turned its leaders into Europhile Social Democrats.

Lord Heseltine’s history of attacking conservatives is peerless, and eventually he got around to me. He took part in an interview with Andrew Neil designed as a character assassination, where he argued I should be expelled from the Conservative Party as support for Brexit was “clearly far to the right of the Conservatives.”

The Guardian reported the links between this interview and the now infamous “Tatler Tory” scandal, but stated they had no reason to believe Lord Heseltine was involved in any conspiracy.

I have information that suggests otherwise, and as a result I dismissed him from the Bow Group Board of Patrons, despite his 60 year association with the organisation. It was among my proudest moments – it was apparent it upset him.

The man has done more to damage conservatism in Britain than anyone, ever. Far from being associated with the Bow Group he should be our sworn enemy, and that of all conservatives.

Last week Lord Heseltine maintained his ludicrous argument that Britain should join the Euro and embrace shared sovereignty with the EU. Yesterday he made the statement that Boris Johnson is obscene, racist and deranged for his support for Brexit.

The vast majority of the membership of the Conservative Party support Brexit, and even greater proportion of conservatives in the country do; why should we sit idly by and listen to more lectures on the BBC from an 83 year old liberal traitor about the future of our own movement and Britain’s place in the world?

Even if Guy Fawkes had succeeded in detonating his full payload it probably would have only shifted masonry. Michael Heseltine destroyed something far more valuable. By rights the conservative movement should burn an effigy of him every 28th November.

He is 83 years old, and won’t be alive for much longer. It is important for the memory of Margaret Thatcher and the integrity of the conservative movement that we remind him and the world that he is a traitor who has always acted against the best interests of this country, and whose only base is the international liberal establishment.

It is Michael Heseltine that is unwelcome in the conservative movement. It is well overdue time to kick him out hard.