Matthew Parris: She'll Do The Maths!

The Daily Telegraph (attacking gay marriage and HS2) remarks that “Tory membership has almost halved . . . since David Cameron became leader in 2005”: a truth expressed in a manner that turns it into an untruth. The party’s grassroots base has indeed shrunk by half, but that’s because (with a couple of blips) it has been shrinking continuously, like Labour’s and the Liberal Democrats’, for 60 years.

The Tory membership graph my researcher and I have generated is fascinating. The only happening with which it is possible to correlate any sharp change is the ousting of Mrs T. Of all Tory leaders since 1975 Mr Cameron is the only one who achieved a substantial increase for a while — and that didn’t last. Under Mrs T the party lost as many members as under Mr Cameron.

Matthew Parris in The Times.

SIR - I would like to let it be known that Fagburn is most strongly opposed to HS2.

High-speed train travel is not in the Bible, nor is it in anyway natural.

If the good Lord had wanted people to travel by train, why did he give us legs?

Good day!

Col R A Fagburn (retd.)

Lymeswold-under-bumhole, Surrey