The letter from Quentin Davies, Conservative MP for Grantham and Stamford, to his party leader David Cameron

“I have been a member of the Conservative Party for over 30 years, and have served for 20 years in the Parliamentary Party, in a variety of backbench and front bench roles. This has usually been a great pleasure, and always a great privilege. It is therefore with much sadness that I write you this letter. But you are entitled to know the truth.

“Under your leadership the Conservative Party appears to me to have ceased collectively to believe in anything, or to stand for anything. It has no bedrock. It exists on shifting sands. A sense of mission has been replaced by a PR agenda.

“For the first 19 years of my time in the House, in common I imagine with the great majority of my colleagues, it never occurred to me to leave the Party, whatever its current vicissitudes. Ties of familiarity, of friendship, and above all of commitment to constituency supporters are for all of us very strong and incredibly difficult to break.

“But they cannot be the basis for living a lie - for continuing in an organisation when one no longer has respect for its leadership or understanding of its aims. I have come to that appreciation slowly and painfully and as a result of many things, some of which are set out below.

“The first horrible realisation that I might not be able to continue came last year. My initial reaction was to suppress it.

“You had come to office as leader of the party committed to break a solemn agreement we had with the European People’s Party to sit with them in the EPP-ED group during the currency of this European Parliament. For seven months you vacillated, and during that time we had several conversations. It was quite clear to me that you had no qualms in principle about tearing up this agreement, and that it was only the balance of prevailing political pressures which led you ultimately to stop short of doing so (though since then you have hardly acted in good faith in continuing with the agreement, for example you never attend the EPP-ED summits claiming that you are ”too busy“ - even though half a dozen or more prime ministers are always present.)

“Of course I knew that you had put yourself in a position such that if you did not leave the EPP-ED group you would be breaking other promises you had given to colleagues, and on which many of them had counted in voting for you at the leadership election. But that I fear only made the position worse. The trouble with trying to face both ways is that you are likely to lose everybody’s confidence.

“Aside from the rather significant issues of principle involved, you have of course paid a practical price for your easy promises. You are the first leader of the Conservative Party who (for different reasons) will not be received either by the President of the United States or by the Chancellor of Germany (up to, and very much including, Iain Duncan Smith every one of your predecessors was most welcome both in the White House and in all the chancelleries of Europe).

“It is fair to say that you have so far made a shambles of your foreign policy, and that would be a great handicap to you - and, more seriously, to the country - if you ever came to power.

“I have never done business with people who deliberately break contracts, and I knew last year that if you left the EPP-ED group I could no longer remain in a party under your leadership.

“In fact, you held back and I tried to put this ugly incident out of my mind and carry on. But the last year has been a series of shocks and disappointments.

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