There will be another, more serious attempt to launch a British tea party movement in Brighton today. Not only, being British, tea will be served (and cucumber sandwiches, I hope) but the whole event is promising to be rather tame and controlled unlike that anarchic, grass-roots colonial movement.
The tea party is being imported into Brighton by The Freedom Association, a national organization, first set up by the McWhirter twins back in the seventies to fight trade union power. It is a fringe event at the Conservatives’ Spring Conference and will be addressed by the ubiquitous Daniel Hannan MEP. Almost certainly, most of the attendees will be Conservatives who are in Brighton for the conference.
All of which makes me hum and ha but I shall go anyway. There has to be somebody there who has not been co-opted by the political establishment. More on this on Your Freedom and Ours.
You know, I sometimes read Daniel Hannan’s blog and he will write about something like a British Tea Party movement, and after writing, in the blog comments, I see what I think is push back from commenters. Basically about how the Conservatives need a good shaking up and it’s no use thinking about tea parties until this happens.
At least, that is what it seems like to me – an American far removed. It’s quite difficult to gauge these things from just reading papers, isn’t it?
– Madhu