The Spectator’s Notes | 20 January 2007

Are you a hedger or a ditcher? The distinction was invented to describe the opposition to Asquith’s threat to the House of Lords in 1911, and it applies today to Euroscepticism. It is not a coincidence that Lord Willoughby de Broke, one of the two Conservative peers who have just joined Ukip, is the grandson of the 19th Lord Willoughby de Broke, who was perhaps the greatest of the ditchers. The 19th baron wrote: ‘There is nothing so wicked as a compromise about a principle.’ For Willoughby de Broke 19 (as Americans might call him) the principle was the power of the hereditary peerage; for Willoughby de Broke 21 it is opposition to Britain’s membership of the European Union. Unlike many Conservatives, I do not think the defectors to Ukip are evil or treacherous. Tories easily forget how often their leadership has promised something definite to Eurosceptics — the latest is David Cameron’s pledge to withdraw from the European People’s Party in the European Parliament — and then let the promise slide.